Krill may be small, but their role in carbon storage is monumental. Beneath Antarctica's icy waters, these tiny crustaceans are emerging as unexpected heroes in the fight against atmospheric carbon.



While the significance of blue carbon habitats like mangroves, seagrasses, and saltmarshes is well-known, recent research highlights the vital contribution of Antarctic krill and their impressive carbon storage capacity.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-unsung-heroes-of-carbon-capture">The unsung heroes of carbon capture</h2>



When we think of <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/mountains-both-carbon-sinks-and-carbon-sources/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">carbon sinks</a> - the vital natural systems that absorb and store carbon from the atmosphere - we might not consider the role of small crustaceans.



The new findings reveal that Antarctic krill store amounts of carbon that are comparable to critical blue carbon habitats like mangroves, seagrasses, and saltmarshes.



Despite <a href="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/antarctic-krill_store-huge-amounts-carbon_credit-Imperial-College_1m.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">their minute size</a>, these krill contribute significantly to carbon cycling, thanks to their enormous combined populations.



"A key player in the biological carbon pump is the Antarctic krill,&nbsp;Euphausia superba, whose faecal pellets, moults and carcasses can completely dominate Southern Ocean carbon fluxes to the ocean’s interior in the Austral growth season," wrote the researchers.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-role-of-krill-in-carbon-cycling">The role of krill in carbon cycling</h2>



Krill are often viewed as merely being food for larger animals. Whales, seals, and penguins relish these <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/new-deep-sea-crustacean-species-discovered-in-the-bahamas/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">crustaceans</a>, and humans also fish them for bait, aquaculture, and dietary supplements. 



However, the value of krill extends far beyond the food chain.



“For the past decade we have been piecing together the role krill have in carbon cycling, finally resulting in this amazing finding that krill, and their poo, store similar amounts of carbon as some coastal marine plants," explained Dr. Emma Cavan, one of the lead authors from <a href="https://www.imperial.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Imperial College London</a>.



Protection for these vital creatures is an urgent matter. 



"I hope this means we can now work towards conserving krill and their valuable Southern Ocean ecosystem with the same gumption as we are seagrasses and mangroves," Cavan continued.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-carbon-storage-in-ocean-systems">Carbon storage in ocean systems</h2>



<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/climate-change-is-impacting-marine-life-more-than-we-realized/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Marine life</a> plays a pivotal role in locking carbon away from the atmosphere in ocean systems. The term "blue carbon" was coined over a decade ago to describe the crucial role <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/native-aquatic-plants-could-help-clean-coastal-waters/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">coastal marine plants</a> play in this process. 



Yet, the ocean has other storage methods far from the coast through animals like krill. These creatures feed on phytoplankton - microscopic <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/good-news-plants-are-absorbing-more-human-produced-co2-than-expected/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">plants that absorb carbon</a> during photosynthesis.



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><a href="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/antarctic-krill_store-huge-amounts-carbon_illustration_credit-Imperial-College_1m.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img src="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/antarctic-krill_store-huge-amounts-carbon_illustration_credit-Imperial-College_1s.webp" alt="Illustration of Antarctic krill in the Southern Ocean ecosystem. Credit: Glynn Gorick/Imperial College" class="wp-image-1945051"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Illustration of Antarctic krill in the Southern Ocean ecosystem. Credit: Glynn Gorick/Imperial College</figcaption></figure>



When krill excrete or shed their exoskeletons, the carbon they've consumed sinks to the ocean depths, where it remains for a long time. 



This process could lock away at least 20 million tons of carbon annually, which is the equivalent of up to $46 billion worth of carbon storage.



“Antarctic krill are well known for being at the center of the unique Southern Ocean ecosystem and supporting an important fishery. But this study paints another picture of krill -- on their key role in storing carbon," noted study co-author Professor Angus Atkinson from <a href="https://pml.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Plymouth Marine Laboratory</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-power-of-krill-swarms">The power of krill swarms</h2>



The massive populations of krill make them effective carbon storers. Swarms can contain up to 30 trillion individuals, producing a deluge of carbon-rich waste products.



“One of the amazing things about krill is that they form massive swarms, which can be over a kilometer in length," said Dr. Anna Belcher, a co-author from the <a href="https://www.ceh.ac.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">UK Centre for Ecology &amp; Hydrology</a>. 



"This drives a huge 'rain' of krill poo after feeding, making krill globally important for locking carbon away from the atmosphere."



The study also reveals that the depth needed to secure carbon storage effectively is surprisingly shallow, with an average of 381 meters.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-protecting-krill-for-carbon-storage">Protecting krill for carbon storage </h2>



Antarctic krill are under increasing threat from rapid polar climate change, which is drastically altering their habitat. These krill are also targeted by an expanding fishery that further depletes their populations.



The combined pressures make the carbon storage capacity of krill an urgent and vital area for protection. 



Preserving this crucial carbon sink is essential for maintaining the delicate balance of the Southern Ocean ecosystem, and for meeting global climate goals.



The research highlights the need to integrate carbon considerations into broader conservation policies.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52135-6" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nature Communications</a>.



-----



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Tiny Antarctic krill store enormous amounts of carbon

Krill may be small, but their role in carbon storage is monumental. Beneath Antarctica's icy waters, these tiny crustaceans are emerging as unexpected heroes in the fight against atmospheric carbon. While the significance of blue carbon habitats like mangroves, seagrasses, and saltmarshes is well-known, recent research highlights the vital contribution of Antarctic krill and their impressive carbon storage capacity. The unsung heroes of carbon capture When we think of carbon sinks - the vital natural systems that absorb and store carbon from the atmosphere - we might...

<div>
<div class="img-wrapper">At the southern end of the Earth, a NASA plane carrying a team of scientists and a sophisticated instrument suite to study ice is returning to surveying Antarctica. For the past eight years, Operation IceBridge has been on a mission to build a record of how polar ice is evolving in a changing environment.</div>
<div class="img-wrapper"></div>
<div class="img-wrapper">The information IceBridge has gathered in the Antarctic, which includes data on the thickness and shape of snow and ice, as well as the topography of the land and ocean floor beneath the ocean and the ice, has allowed scientists to determine that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may be in irreversible decline. Researchers have also used IceBridge data to evaluate climate models of Antarctica and map of the bedrock underneath Antarctic ice.</div>
IceBridge completed the first research flight of its 2016 Antarctic campaign on October 14. The campaign will continue through November 19. This year, the mission is based in Punta Arenas, a city at the southern tip of Chile. From there, IceBridge is carrying 12-hour flights back and forth to Antarctica, covering most of the western section of the frozen continent - the region that is experiencing the fastest changes and is Antarctica's biggest contributor to sea level rise.

"We have a total of 46 flight lines to choose from this year," said John Sonntag, IceBridge mission scientist. "If we're lucky -the weather is very tricky in Antarctica- we'll fly around half of them, for a total of 300 flight hours."

IceBridge's flights will be mostly revisits of lines flown in previous years, to monitor how the ice has evolved since the last time the mission measured it. Still, there are some variations and additions to this year's plans. IceBridge intends to carry a new flight in the Bellingshausen Sea that will mimic some of the tracks that an upcoming NASA satellite mission -the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2- will follow in that area. The data collected during this flight will help calibrate ICESat-2's future measurements.

"This year, we'll mostly repeat our usual flight lines for sea ice, which have been proven to give us good coverage of the sea ice cover in the Weddell and Bellingshausen seas," said Nathan Kurtz, IceBridge's project scientist and a sea ice researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

For land ice, IceBridge has adjusted some of its planned flights to allow scientists to better understand rapidly changing areas that are still relatively unexplored, such as the Smith, Pope and Kohler glaciers and the Getz Ice Shelf. For flights elsewhere in Antarctica, the IceBridge team is also coordinating with a group of scientists from the British Antarctic Survey, who will also be conducting aerial surveys of West Antarctica in some of the areas that IceBridge studies.

"We're interested in knowing the differences between our radar and laser systems and theirs and making best use of finite flight time," said Joe MacGregor, IceBridge's deputy project scientist and a land ice researcher at Goddard. "If we fly portions of their flights, we'll be able to compare the data and collaborate in our efforts to understand the future of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. If we fly in between their tracks, then the combination of our datasets and theirs can produce a more complete picture of a changing Antarctica."

Unlike in some previous years, when IceBridge flew on smaller planes with limited loads, this campaign's flights will again be conducted aboard NASA's DC-8 roomy airborne science laboratory, which allows the mission to carry its full instrument suite. The main instrument is a laser altimeter that records minute changes in the height of the ice surface from one year to the next. Accompanying the laser are three radars that analyze the elevation and layer composition of the snow and ice, as well as the shape of the land underneath, and a high-resolution camera system. The DC-8 also carries a gravimeter and magnetometer that measure small variations in gravity and the Earth's magnetic field to map the ocean cavity underneath Antarctica's ice edges, which is essential for improving our understanding of how the ice and ocean interact. For the first time in the Antarctic, IceBridge will also be using an infrared camera to measure the surface temperature of the ice.

A high-school teacher from Colorado, a handful of professors and students from Universidad de Magallanes, Chile, and several media teams, among other visitors, will be flying with IceBridge during the Antarctic campaign.

Operation IceBridge's mission is to collect data on changing polar land and sea ice and maintain continuity of measurements between ICESat missions. The original ICESat mission ended in 2009, and its successor, ICESat-2, is scheduled for launch in 2018. Operation IceBridge is currently funded until 2019. The planned overlap with ICESat-2 will help scientists validate the satellite's measurements. NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia provided the laser altimeter and the infrared camera that are being used during IceBridge's 2016 Antarctic spring campaign. IceBridge's three radar instruments come from the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets at the University of Kansas, while NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California, provided the Digital Mapping System, and the gravimeter and magnetometer onboard IceBridge are managed by Columbia University.

---

Credit: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/icebridge" target="_blank">Operation IceBridge</a>


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<div></div>

Operation IceBridge begins 8th year studying Antarctica

At the southern end of the Earth, a NASA plane...

<div>
<div class="img-wrapper">Tiny robots have been helping researchers study how climate change affects biodiversity. Developed by Northeastern University scientist Brian Helmuth, the "robomussels" have the shape, size, and color of actual mussels, with miniature built-in sensors that track temperatures inside the mussel beds.</div>
<div class="img-wrapper"></div>
<div class="img-wrapper">For the past 18 years, every 10 to 15 minutes, Helmuth and a global research team of 48 scientists have used robomussels to track internal body temperature, which is determined by the temperature of the surrounding air or water, and the amount of solar radiation the devices absorb. They place the robots inside mussel beds in oceans around the globe and record temperatures. The researchers have built a database of nearly two decades worth of data enabling scientists to pinpoint areas of unusual warming, intervene to help curb damage to vital marine ecosystems, and develop strategies that could prevent extinction of certain species.</div>
Housed at Northeastern's Marine Science Center in Nahant, Massachusetts, this largest-ever database is not only a remarkable way to track the effects of climate change, the findings can also reveal emerging hotspots so policymakers and scientists can step in and relieve stressors such as erosion and water acidification before it's too late.

"They look exactly like mussels but they have little green blinking lights in them," says Helmuth. "You basically pluck out a mussel and then glue the device to the rock right inside the mussel bed. They enable us to link our field observations with the physiological impact of global climate change on these ecologically and economically important animals."

For ecological forecasters such as Helmuth, mussels act as a barometer of climate change. That's because they rely on external sources of heat such as air temperature and sun exposure for their body heat and thrive, or not, depending on those conditions. Using fieldwork along with mathematical and computational models, Helmuth forecasts the patterns of growth, reproduction, and survival of mussels in intertidal zones.

Over the years, he and his colleagues have found surprises: "Our expectations of where to look for the effects of climate change in nature are more complex than anticipated," says Helmuth. For example, in an earlier paper in the journal Science, his team found that hotspots existed not only at the southern end of the species' distribution, in this case, southern California; they also existed at sites up north, in Oregon and Washington state.

"These datasets tell us when and where to look for the effects of climate change," he says. "Without them we could miss early warning signs of trouble."

The robomussels' near-continuous measurements serve as an early warning system. "If we start to see sites where the animals are regularly getting to temperatures that are right below what kills them, we know that any slight increase is likely to send them over the edge, and we can act," says Helmuth.

It's not only the mussels that may be pulled back from the brink. The advance notice could inform everything from maintaining the biodiversity of coastal systems to determining the best--and worst--places to locate mussel farms.

"Losing mussel beds is essentially like clearing a forest," says Helmuth. "If they go, everything that's living in them will go. They are a major food supply for many species, including lobsters and crabs. They also function as filters along near-shore waters, clearing huge amounts of particulates. So losing them can affect everything from the growth of species we care about because we want to eat them to water clarity to biodiversity of all the tiny animals that live on the insides of the beds."
--

</div>
<div></div>
<div>Credit: <a href="http://www.northeastern.edu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Northeastern University</a></div>

Scientists create 'robomussels' to monitor climate change

Tiny robots have been helping researchers study how climate change...

Nearly 200 nations have reached a deal, announced Saturday morning after all-night negotiations, to limit the use of greenhouse gases far more powerful than carbon dioxide in a major effort to fight climate change.
The talks on hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, were called the first test of global will since the historic Paris Agreement to cut carbon emissions was reached last year. HFCs are described as the world's fastest-growing climate pollutant and are used in air conditioners and refrigerators. Experts say cutting them is the fastest way to reduce global warming.
President Barack Obama, in a statement Saturday, called the new deal "an ambitious and far-reaching solution to this looming crisis." The spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called it "critically important."
The agreement, unlike the broader Paris one, is legally binding. It caps and reduces the use of HFCs in a gradual process beginning by 2019 with action by developed countries including the United States, the world's second-worst polluter. More than 100 developing countries, including China, the world's top carbon emitter, will start taking action by 2024, when HFC consumption levels should peak.
A small group of countries including India, Pakistan and some Gulf states pushed for and secured a later start in 2028, saying their economies need more time to grow. That's three years earlier than India, the world's third-worst polluter, had first proposed.
"It's a very historic moment, and we are all very delighted that we have come to this point where we can reach a consensus and agree to most of the issues that were on the table," said India's chief delegate, Ajay Narayan Jha.
Environmental groups had hoped that the deal could reduce global warming by a half-degree Celsius by the end of this century. This agreement gets about 90 percent of the way there, said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development.
Zaelke's group said this is the "largest temperature reduction ever achieved by a single agreement."
The new agreement is "equal to stopping the entire world's fossil-fuel CO2 emissions for more than two years," David Doniger, climate and clean air program director with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement.
It is estimated that the agreement will cut the global levels of HFCs by 80 to 85 percent by 2047, the World Resources Institute said in a statement.
Experts said they hope that market forces will help speed up the limits agreed to in the deal.
HFCs were introduced in the 1980s as a substitute for ozone-depleting gases. But their danger has grown as air conditioner and refrigerator sales have soared in emerging economies like China and India. HFCs are also found in inhalers and insulating foams.
Major economies have debated how quickly to phase out HFCs. The United States, whose delegation was led by Secretary of State John Kerry, and Western countries want quick action. Nations such as India want to give their industries more time to adjust.
"Thank God we got to this agreement that is good for all nations, that takes into consideration all regional and national issues," said Taha Mohamed Zatari, the head of Saudi Arabia's negotiating team.
Small island states and many African countries had pushed for early timeframes, saying they face the biggest threat from climate change.
"It may not be entirely what the islands wanted, but it is a good deal," Mattlan Zackhras, the minister-in-assistance to the president of the Marshall Islands, said in a statement. "We all know we must go further, and we will go further."
The U.N. says the next meeting in 2017 will determine how much of the billions of dollars needed to finance the reduction of HFCs will be provided by countries.
HFCs are less plentiful than carbon dioxide, but Kerry said last month that they currently emit as much pollution as 300 coal-fired power plants each year. That amount will rise significantly over the coming decades as air conditioning units and refrigerators reach hundreds of millions of new people.
HFCs don't harm the ozone layer like chlorofluorocarbons and similar gases that were eliminated under the 1987 Montreal Protocol. The entire world ratified that agreement, helping to repair holes in the ozone that helps shield the planet from the harmful rays of the sun. The aim of this meeting was to attach an amendment to that treaty dealing specifically with HFCs.
"This is about much more than the ozone layer and HFCs. It is a clear statement by all world leaders that the green transformation started in Paris is irreversible and unstoppable," Erik Solheim, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, said in a statement.
Environmental groups were already turning attention Saturday to other greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.
"Acting on HFCs does not exempt us from acting on CO2 or other important greenhouse gases like methane. We emit considerably more carbon, and it lingers in the atmosphere for more than 500 years," Carol Werner, executive director of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, said in a statement.
---
Associated Press videographer Khaled Kazziha in Kigali contributed.
© 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

200 nations finalize agreement to limit powerful greenhouse gases

Nearly 200 nations have reached a deal, announced Saturday morning...

<div></div>
<div>

In recent years, a class of highly absorbent, nanoporous materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as a promising material for carbon capture in power plants. But finding the optimal MOF to do the best job is another story.

"People are really excited about these materials because we can make a huge variety and really tune them," said Northwestern University's Randall Q. Snurr. "But there's a flip side to that. If you have an application in mind, there are thousands of existing MOFs and millions of potential MOFs you could make. How do you find the best one for a given application?"

Snurr, who is the John G. Searle Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and his group have discovered a way to rapidly identify top candidates for carbon capture -- using just 1 percent of the computational effort that was previously required. By applying a genetic algorithm, they rapidly searched through a database of 55,000 MOFs.

"In the past, we had to evaluate all 55,000 candidates one at a time," Snurr said. "We just marched through them and calculated all of their properties. This genetic algorithm allows you to avoid that."

One of the identified top candidates, a variant of NOTT-101, has a higher capacity for carbon dioxide (CO2) than any MOF reported in scientific literature for the relevant conditions. This information could lead to designs for newly commissioned, cleaner power plants.

"The percentage of carbon dioxide that the MOF can absorb depends on the process," Snurr said. "The Department of Energy target is to remove 90 percent of carbon dioxide from a power plant; it's likely that a process using this material could meet that target."

Supported by the US Department of Energy, the research appeared online today in the journal Science Advances. Yongchul G. Chung and Diego A. Gomez-Gualdron, former postdoctoral fellows in Snurr's laboratory, were the paper's co-first authors. Northwestern chemistry professors J. Fraser Stoddart, Joseph Hupp, and Omar Farha contributed to the work as well as Fengqi You, former professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern.

With their nanoscopic pores and incredibly high surface areas, MOFs are excellent materials for gas storage. MOFs' vast internal surface areas allow them to hold remarkably high volumes of gas. The volume of some MOF crystals might be the size of a grain of salt, for example, but the internal surface area, if unfolded, could cover an entire football field.

Snurr's previous work has explored how to use MOFs to capture carbon from existing power plants during the post-combustion process. About 10 to 15 percent of power plant exhaust is CO2; the rest is mainly nitrogen and water vapor. Snurr and Hupp designed a MOF that can sort these gases to capture CO2 before it enters the atmosphere.

Recently, Snurr recalled that the method is a lot easier after a little chemical processing. Chemically processing the fuel before it enters the power plant can turn it into CO2 and hydrogen. After the MOF captures the CO2, the hydrogen is burned and the only byproduct is water. This extra chemical processing step would need to be built into new power plants as a pre-combustion process.

"In places like China, where they are still building a lot of power plants," Snurr said, "this would make a lot of sense."

An optimization technique that mimics natural selection, the genetic algorithm takes a random population of candidate solutions and evolves them toward better solutions through mutation, crossover, and selection. Snurr said this technique has been applied to material screening in the past but not in a search for top candidates for the pre-combustion process, which he describes as a "new challenge."

To tackle carbon capture in pre-combustion, the genetic algorithm pinpointed NOTT-101 as a top candidate. (The material is named after Nottingham, the place where the MOF was first discovered.) Hupp and Farha created the NOTT-101 variant and tested it in the laboratory. Out of all of the MOFs that have been evaluated for pre-combustion, this material had the highest capacity for capturing carbon and good selectivity for grabbing CO2 to sort it from hydrogen.

"Initially, I wasn't sure how well this algorithm would work," Snurr said. "But using just 1 percent of the usual computational effort is a significant improvement in speed. It's very exciting."

</div>
<div>---</div>
<div></div>
<div>Credit: <a href="http://www.northwestern.edu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Northwestern University</a></div>

Progress made in finding ideal materials for carbon capture

In recent years, a class of highly absorbent, nanoporous materials...

With dreams of turning carbon dioxide into everything from concrete to fish food, teams from six countries have advanced beyond the first phase of a $20 million XPRIZE contest to find profitable uses for CO2 emitted by power plants.
A panel of nine judges recently chose the 28 proposals from 47 entries submitted last summer. The teams now will have a year or so to demonstrate their techniques in laboratories and compete for the first $5 million in prize money, XPRIZE announced Monday.
"The race is really on," said Paul Bunje, principal and senior scientist at XPRIZE.
The goal is to find new ways to prevent carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, from entering the atmosphere and contributing to global warming. Coal-fired power plants are a major source of carbon dioxide emissions, a problem contributing to hard times in the U.S. coal industry.
Semi-finalist entries came from Canada, China, India, Switzerland, Scotland and the U.S.
Successful ideas in the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE must work as anticipated and will need to be profitable enough to offset their cost in a real-world application.
Ideas moving up to the contest's second round would turn CO2 into a range of products including graphene, a newly discovered substance much stronger than steel; carbon nanotubes, extremely tiny tubes with potential uses in electronics; and toothpaste.
Making high-protein fish food from carbon dioxide could have environmental benefits besides controlling greenhouse gas. Farm-raised fish, such as salmon, could be more sustainable if they got some of their nutrition from sources that don't grow in the ocean.
In the third and final round, teams will demonstrate their ideas at a coal-fired power plant in Wyoming and at natural-gas-fired power plant in Canada.
"Each round is 10 times harder than the previous one in some respects," Bunje said.
The winners on each side of the competition - technologies destined for gas-fired-power-plants and those for use at coal-fired power plants - will get $2.5 million after the second round. They will each get $7.5 million after the third and final round.
NRG is a U.S. energy company based in Houston, Texas. COSIA stands for the Canadian Oil Sands Innovation Alliance, a group of companies developing the Canadian oil sands.
The gas-fired power plant where the competition will take place has yet to be announced. The XPRIZE competition will be the first tenant of a carbon-capture test center under construction at Basin Electric's Dry Fork Station near Gillette in northeast Wyoming.
The state of Wyoming has pledged $15 million toward the project.
---
Follow Mead Gruver at <a href="https://twitter.com/meadgruver">https://twitter.com/meadgruver</a>
© 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

XPRIZE to find profitable uses for CO2 emissions advances to next stage

With dreams of turning carbon dioxide into everything from concrete...

<div>
<div class="img-wrapper">Remember dropping your milk teeth? After a lot of wiggling the tooth finally dropped out. But in your hand was only the enamel-covered crown: the entire root of the tooth had somehow disappeared. In a paper published in Nature, a team of researchers from Uppsala University and the ESRF in France apply synchrotron x-ray tomography to a tiny jawbone of a 424 million year old fossil fish in order to illuminate the origin of this strange system of tooth replacement.</div>
<div class="img-wrapper"></div>
<div class="img-wrapper">Teeth are subject to a lot of wear and tear, so it makes sense to be able to replace them during the lifetime of the animal. Surprisingly, however, the teeth of the earliest jawed vertebrates were fixed to the jaw bones and could not be shed. Tooth shedding eventually evolved independently on two occasions, using two quite different processes. In sharks and rays, the fibres that anchor the tooth to the skin of the jaw dissolve and the whole tooth simply falls out. In bony fish and land vertebrates, the developing tooth becomes attached directly to the jaw bone by a special tissue known as "bone of attachment", and when it is time for the tooth to be shed this attachment must be severed; specialized cells come in and resorb the dentine and bone of attachment until the tooth comes loose. That's why our milk teeth loose their roots before they are shed. But when did this process evolve?

The authors of the new study decided to investigate a jaw bone of the 424 million year old fossil fish Andreolepis from Gotland in Sweden, close to the common ancestor of all living bony fish and land vertebrates. The jaw is a tiny thing, less than a centimetre in length, but it hides a wonderful secret: the internal microstructure of the bone is perfectly preserved and contains a record of its growth history. Until recently it has only been possible to see internal structures by physically cutting thin sections from the fossil and viewing them under the microscope, but this destroys the specimen and provides only a two-dimensional image that is hard to interpret.

However, at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, it is now possible to make tomographic scans that capture the same level of microscopic detail, in three dimensions, without damaging the specimen. Donglei Chen, first author of the study, has spent several years painstakingly 'dissecting' the scan data on the computer screen, building up a three-dimensional map of the entire sequence of tooth addition and loss - the first time an early fossil dentition has been analyzed in such detail.

"Every time a tooth was shed, the resorption process created a hollow where it had been attached. When the succeeding replacement tooth was cemented in place by bone of attachment, the old resorption surface remained as a faint buried scar within the bone tissue. I found up to four of these buried resorption surfaces under each tooth, stacked on top of each other like plates in a cupboard. This shows that the teeth were replaced again and again during the life of the fish," explains Donglei Chen.

This is the earliest known example of tooth shedding by basal resorption, and it seems to be most similar to the process of tooth replacement seen today in primitive bony fish such as gar (Lepisosteus) and bichir (Polypterus). Like in these fish, new replacement teeth developed alongside the old ones, rather than underneath them like in us.

"The amount of biological information we get from the scans is simply astonishing. We can follow the process of growth and resorption right down to cellular level, almost like in a living animal. As we apply this technique to more early vertebrates, we will come to understand their life processes much better - and no doubt we will be in for some major surprises," says Per Ahlberg, one of the leaders of the project.


</div>
</div>
<div>--</div>
<div></div>
<div>Credit: <a href="http://www.uu.se/en/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Uppsala University</a></div>

Tooth shedding evolved over 400 million years ago

Remember dropping your milk teeth? After a lot of wiggling...

On Oct. 17, Hurricane Nicole has been active for almost two weeks. Nicole was still a hurricane when the GPM core observatory satellite flew over on October 17.
<div>

As GPM looked at the rainfall rates within the storm, the National Hurricane Center noted that Nicole is still having a widespread effect on ocean swells around the North Atlantic from the U.S. to Europe and Africa.

The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or core GPM satellite passed over Nicole in the North Atlantic Ocean on Oct. 17 at 12:36 a.m. EDT (0436 UTC). The GPM satellite analyzed the rainfall in Nicole's large ragged eye. GPM's Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) swath sliced through the center of Nicole's eye and found some very heavy rainfall. A few strong storms in the southern side of the eye were dropping rain at a rate of over 113 mm (4.4 inches) per hour.

GPM's radar (DPR KU band) data collected with this pass were used in a 3-D examination of storm top heights. GPM found that the most powerful storms in Nicole's eye were reaching heights of only about 12 km (7.4 miles). GPM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA.

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 UTC) on Oct. 17 the center of Hurricane Nicole was located near 41.4 degrees north latitude and 44.6 degrees west longitude. That's about 560 miles (900 km) southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland, Canada.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Nicole was moving toward the north-northeast near 9 mph (15 kph), and this general heading with a significant increase in forward speed is expected during the next couple of days. Maximum sustained winds are near 75 mph (120 kph) with higher gusts. Little change in strength is forecast during the next 48 hours. However, Nicole should lose its tropical characteristics by early Tuesday, Oct. 18.

Nicole is a large hurricane. NHC estimated hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 90 miles (150 km) from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 415 miles (665 km). The estimated minimum central pressure is 962 millibars.

Nicole is expected to continue producing hurricane force winds while moving northward over the cooler waters of the North Atlantic Ocean. NHC predicts that Nicole's center will cool and transition to a strong extra-tropical cyclone on Oct. 18 as it heads toward Iceland.

Nicole has left a lasting impression on the ocean as swells from the storm are expected to affect a great deal of coastlines. The National Hurricane Center noted that "large swells associated with Nicole will affect the United States east coast, the coast of Atlantic Canada, Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Greater Antilles, the Leeward Islands, and the Azores islands for the next several days, creating dangerous surf conditions and rip currents. These swells are also likely to reach Europe and the northwest coast of Africa in a day or two."

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<div>Credit: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NASA</a></div>

Hurricane Nicole seen moving over cold North Atlantic

On Oct. 17, Hurricane Nicole has been active for almost...

<div>
<div class="img-wrapper">NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible look at Typhoon Sarika as it was poised for its second of three expected landfalls. When the satellite passed over Sarika it was in the South China Sea.</div>
Strong wind signal #3 is in force at Hong Kong, China, according to the Central Weather Bureau. Sarika, formerly known as Tropical Depression 24W fills up the northern half of the South China Sea on satellite imagery.

On Oct. 17 at 2:10 (06:10 UTC) NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over Sarika and provided a visible-light image of the storm. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite showed the cloud-filled center of circulation in the central northern South China Sea, southwest of Hainan Island, China.

At 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC) Sarika had maximum sustained winds near 92 mph (80 knots/148 kph). It was centered near 18.0 degrees north latitude and 112.4 degrees east longitude, about 409 nautical miles east-southeast of Hanoi, Vietnam. It was moving to the west at 10 mph (8 knots/16 kph).

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecasts Sarika to move toward Hainan Island, China where it is expected to make landfall. Sarika is later forecast to continue west and make a third landfall in northern Vietnam.


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<div>Credit: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NASA</a></div>

Typhoon Sarika seen approaching landfall in China

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible look at Typhoon...

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<div class="img-wrapper">NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible look at Powerful Typhoon Haima as it continued moving to the west-northwest through the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. Haima is forecast to affect the northern Philippines where it is known as Lawin.</div>
On Oct. 15, Tropical Depression 25W formed and strengthened into Tropical Storm Haima southwest of Guam.

On Oct. 17 at 12:30 a.m. EDT (04:30 UTC) NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over Haima and provided a visible-light image of the storm. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite showed a cloud-covered pin-hole eye surrounded by bands of powerful thunderstorms. A large band of thunderstorms extended from the north to east of the center of circulation.

At 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC) Haima had maximum sustained winds near 132 mph (115 knots/213 kph). That makes Haima a major hurricane, Category 4, on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

Haima was centered near 13.8 degrees north latitude and 134.5 degrees east longitude, about 787 nautical miles east of Manila, Philippines. It was moving to the west-northwest at 12.6 mph (11 knots/20.5 kph).

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecast calls for Haima to move west-northwest to northwest, while intensifying up to 161 mph (140 knots/259 kph) on Oct. 18.

After moving over northern Luzon, Philippines, Haima is then expected to make landfall in mainland China, northeast of Hong Kong.


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<div>Credit: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NASA</a></div>

Typhoon Haima seen moving toward Philippines

NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided a visible look at Powerful...

A significant portion of coral on the Great Barrier Reef has died, the Australian government announced as its assessment of the area entered its second phase.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority began its follow-up investigation into the extent of coral bleaching in early October. The project aims to analyze the level of damage caused by the worst mass bleaching event on record.

An initial survey of the landmark revealed 22 percent of coral on the reef died as a result of exposure. Officials report 85 percent of this mortality occurred in the area between Cape York and Lizard Island.

Average coral reef mortality was found to be 50 percent in the Far Northern Management Area, 16 percent in the Cairns-Cooktown Management Area, and 3 percent in the Townsville-Whitsunday Management Area. No bleaching-induced deaths were found south of Mackay.

Officials note studies were completed in the Cairns-Cooktown Management Area in March, and mortality levels are likely higher than initially recorded.

Mass bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef has been linked to a sharp uptick in coral reef deaths. Australian researchers used a microscope, camera and smart tablet to examine how organisms in the area responded to the heat stress in August, marking the first time behaviors specific to bleaching were captured on film.

News of the coral deaths and subsequent investigation come as scientists refute viral claims the Great Barrier Reef has "died." While experts concede the extent of the damage is severe, they note a large portion of the area remains intact.

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Credit: UPI

Scientists: Huge portion of the Great Barrier Reef is dead

A significant portion of coral on the Great Barrier Reef...

<div>
<div class="img-wrapper">For wild chimpanzees, social status is more than just a matter of pride. High-ranking chimpanzees of both sexes usually have better access to food and mates, boosting chances of survival for themselves and their offspring.</div>
But male and female chimpanzees achieve social status in dramatically different ways, says a new study by primatologists at Duke University. While males actively challenge their superiors to win higher rank, female chimpanzees accept their position in the social pecking order, waiting until more senior group members die before moving up the ladder.

The study, which appeared online Oct. 14 in the journal Scientific Reports, provides the first detailed look at how social status among wild chimpanzees changes throughout their lifetimes.

"We found that, after entering the adult hierarchy, there was a complete absence of successful challenges for rank increases among females," said Steffen Foerster, senior research scientist at Duke University and lead author on the study. "It's like a formal queue."

Unlike the more gregarious males, female chimpanzees tend to be loners, spending much time by themselves or with their own children. One-on-one encounters between females are generally rare, giving researchers few opportunities to observe signs that would clue them in to each chimpanzee's relative rank.

"For a long time we've been aware that there really are differences in rank between females, but being able to quantify that has been hard because they really don't interact very often," said Duke evolutionary anthropology professor Anne Pusey, who is a senior author on the paper.

To explore how female chimpanzees maneuver up and down the social ladder, Foerster, Pusey and their colleagues plumbed more than 40 years of daily records documenting the behaviors of 100 or so wild chimpanzees residing in Gombe National Park in Tanzania, where Pusey first began working alongside Jane Goodall in 1970.

Chimpanzees signal dominance and submission to each other through acts of aggression, such as chases and attacks, and through making a sound called a "pant-grunt," which is a clear sign of subordination to a superior. The team used a new rating system to document these interactions, allowing them to determine the rank orders of male and female chimpanzees and watch how they shifted over time.

Their results showed that, unlike males, whose rank usually peaks when they reach their prime in their early 20s before declining again, female rank gradually increases as they age, and their rank order remains stable throughout their lifetimes. In addition, though males almost always start their adulthoods at the bottom of the pecking order, the female starting rank varies with each individual.

"That seems to be a crucial moment for them, because after they enter the hierarchy at about 12 years of age, they can't really change anything about their position unless something happens at the top and individuals die," Foerster said.

The team is still investigating how these initial rankings are established, but preliminary evidence indicates that females with mothers in the group seem to have an edge.

Despite the benefits of social status on their reproductive success -- higher-ranking females appear to have access to better food and higher infant survival than their low-ranking counterparts -- the tendency of female chimpanzees to "wait their turn" rather than fighting for rank reveals the competing priorities males and females face when ensuring the success of their offspring.

"If a male has a high rank even for a short time but manages to fertilize a lot of females, he achieves high reproductive success," Pusey said. "Whereas a female is only able to raise one offspring at a time, so her reproductive success depends largely on how long she lives."

Compared to males, female chimpanzees "likely have to consider a long-term strategy," Foerster said. "It is potentially dangerous to challenge each other -- you may get injured, your offspring may be killed if you have a little baby. Finding that females actually do not fight for rank tells us how costly these challenges must be for them."

For female chimpanzees, good things come to those who wait.


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<div>Credit: <a href="http://www.duke.edu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Duke University</a></div>

Female chimpanzees don't fight for status

For wild chimpanzees, social status is more than just a...

<div>The same hotspot in Earth's mantle that feeds Iceland's active volcanoes has been playing a trick on the scientists who are trying to measure how much ice is melting on nearby Greenland.</div>
<div>

According to a new study in the journal Science Advances, the hotspot softened the mantle rock beneath Greenland in a way that ultimately distorted their calculations for ice loss in the Greenland ice sheet. This caused them to underestimate the melting by about 20 gigatons (20 billion metric tons) per year.

That means Greenland did not lose about 2,500 gigatons of ice from 2003-2013 as scientists previously thought, but nearly 2,700 gigatons instead--a 7.6 percent difference, said study co-author Michael Bevis of The Ohio State University.

"It's a fairly modest correction," said Bevis, the Ohio Eminent Scholar in Geodynamics, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State and leader of GNET, the Greenland GPS Network.

"It doesn't change our estimates of the total mass loss all over Greenland by that much, but it brings a more significant change to our understanding of where within the ice sheet that loss has happened, and where it is happening now."

The Earth's crust in that part of the world is slowly moving northwest, he explained, and 40 million years ago, parts of Greenland passed over an especially hot column of partially molten rock that now lies beneath Iceland. The hotspot softened the rock in its wake, lowering the viscosity of the mantle rocks along a path running deep below the surface of Greenland's east coast.

During the last ice age, Greenland's ice sheet was much larger than now, and its enormous weight caused Greenland's crust to slowly sink into the softened mantle rock below. When large parts of the ice sheet melted at the end of the ice age, the weight of the ice sheet decreased, and the crust began to rebound. It is still rising, as mantle rock continues to flow inwards and upwards beneath Greenland.

The existence of mantle flow beneath Greenland is not a surprise in itself, Bevis said. When the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites began measuring gravity signals around the world in 2002, scientists knew they would have to separate mass flow beneath the earth's crust from changes in the mass of the overlying ice sheet.

"GRACE measures mass, period. It cannot tell the difference between ice mass and rock mass. So, inferring the ice mass change from the total mass change requires a model of all the mass flows within the earth. If that model is wrong, so is the ice mass change inferred from GRACE," he explained.

Models of this rock flow depend on what researchers can glean about the viscosity of the mantle. The original models assumed a fairly typical mantle viscosity, but Greenland's close encounter with the Iceland hot spot greatly changed the picture.

To the GNET team, the 7.6 percent discrepancy in overall ice loss is overshadowed by the fact that it concealed which parts of the ice sheet are most being affected by climate change. The new results reveal that the pattern of modern ice loss is similar to that which has prevailed since the end of the last ice age.

"This result is a detail, but it is an important detail," Bevis continued. "By refining the spatial pattern of mass loss in the world's second largest--and most unstable--ice sheet, and learning how that pattern has evolved, we are steadily increasing our understanding of ice loss processes, which will lead to better-informed projections of sea level rise."

Computer models can give a good estimate of mantle flow and crustal uplift, he said, and GNET's mission is to make those models better by providing direct observations of present-day crustal motion. That's why the GNET team includes GRACE scientists and earth modelers as well as GPS experts and glaciologists.

The team used GPS to measure uplift in the crust all along Greenland's coast. That's when they discovered that two neighboring stations on the east coast were uplifting far more rapidly than standard models had predicted.

"We did not expect to see the anomalous uplift rates at the two stations that sit on the 'track' of the Iceland hot spot," Bevis said. "We were shocked when we first saw them. Only afterwards did we make the connection."

He added that the discovery holds big implications for measuring ice loss elsewhere in the world.

For instance, GNET has a sister network, ANET, that spans West Antarctica. It employs roughly similar numbers of GPS stations, but spread out over a vastly larger area. Unless more stations are added to ANET, anomalous rates of uplift may go undetected, Bevis cautioned, and analyses of GRACE data will lead to inaccurate estimates of ice loss in Antarctica.

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Credit: <a href="http://news.osu.edu/" target="_blank">Ohio State University</a>
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Greenland ice is melting faster than previously believed

The same hotspot in Earth's mantle that feeds Iceland's active...

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.igb.illinois.edu/">Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology</a> reveals how scientists can modify common crops like soybean, rice, and wheat to protect them from heat stress.



“We need to double crop production by 2050 to feed a growing global population, and not only are we not on track to do that, but climate change is further complicating things,” said Amanda Cavanagh, a lecturer at the University of Essex. 



The study is part of Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE), an international research project that aims to develop food crops that turn the sun’s energy into food more efficiently.



“Using an engineering approach we designed multiple alternative metabolic pathways to photorespiration. Testing them in the field showed increases in productivity which led Amanda to significantly move the project forward by showing our engineered plants can withstand pretty extreme temperature stress,” said study co-author and RIPE researcher Paul South.&nbsp;



“As the climate changes and temperature stresses increase the pressure on our global food supply, farmers will need every tool available including engineering approaches like the synthetic biology used here to maintain safe and productive harvests.”



The experts tested plants modified to have more efficient photorespiration to see if they were better adapted to warmer temperatures.&nbsp;



The team found that the engineered plants produced 26 percent more biomass than the wild-type plants exposed to the same temperatures, and had 15 percent less yield loss under the higher temperatures.



Video Credit: Amanda Nguyen/University of Illinois



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



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Designing crops that can beat the heat

[sendtonews key="QGPzYnXEtN-1712599-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from Carl...

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes the first comprehensive estimate of carbon density in the Saharan, Sahel, and Sudanian zones of Africa. In an effort to measure the amount of carbon stored across these drylands, a team of scientists used high-resolution satellite images and artificial intelligence to map nearly 10 billion individual trees. 



"The high spatial resolution (50 cm) combined with AI and field measurements used in this study is key to improving tree inventories in drylands," said Pierre Hiernaux, a French researcher working for NASA. "The ever-increasing availability of very high-resolution satellite imagery will make it possible to assess carbon pools and their dynamics at the individual tree level on a global scale."



"This study is exceptional because it is pioneering a type of approach that will revolutionize the monitoring of trees and forests on a global scale: in the short term, it will be possible to map the world's trees from the centre of the Amazon to our schoolyards," said <a href="https://www.inrae.fr/en">INRAE</a> researcher Jean-Pierre Wigneron.



"Many fields of application will become much more efficient and accurate, such as tracking carbon stocks, biodiversity, monitoring logging and protection against illegal forest degradation, in near real time.”



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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Remote sensing will revolutionize the way we monitor trees

[sendtonews key="EjmSP20gQK-2593093-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Lesotho: Africa's "Kingdom in the Sky" Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features northwest Lesotho in South Africa.



According to ESA, Lesotho is the only nation in the world that lies completely above 1,000 m in elevation. The country is famous for its tall mountains and narrow valleys, and is known as Africa's "Kingdom in the Sky."



Out of a population of around two million people, about 80 percent live in rural areas. More than 75 percent of these people are engaged in <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/climate-change-will-have-a-global-impact-on-agriculture/">agriculture</a>, including rainfed cereal production and animal grazing.&nbsp;



ESA reports that the country’s agricultural system faces a growing number of issues, with climate-related vulnerabilities such as drought, floods and extreme temperatures occurring more frequently. 



Diamonds are amongst the minerals found in the mountains. Indeed, Lesotho can truly be called the Kingdom in the Sky. Beautiful, culturally rich, safe, affordable, and easily accessible from Durban and Johannesburg, mountainous Lesotho is a vastly underrated travel destination. the Kingdom of Lesotho (Sotho: 'Muso oa Lesotho) is an enclaved country in southern Africa. It is just over 30,000 km2 (11,583 sq mi) in size and has a population of around 2 million.



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;&nbsp;



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Lesotho: Africa's "Kingdom in the Sky"

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> features a visual dataset of.methane emissions from wetlands across the globe. Atmospheric methane levels have reached record highs in recent years, and wetlands are a major source of these emissions.&nbsp;



"Methane is an important greenhouse gas that contributes substantially to global warming. On a molecule by molecule basis, methane is much more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, the main driver of warming," says NASA.



"Though human activities, including agriculture, oil and natural gas production and use, and waste disposal, collectively contribute the majority of methane to the atmosphere, about a third of total methane emissions comes from wetlands."&nbsp;



According to NASA, understanding methane emissions from wetlands and other natural sources is critically important for scientists and policymakers who are working to combat climate change by reducing emissions from human activities.



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



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Wetlands are a major source of methane emissions

[sendtonews key="f8fukm28Vz-2491833-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/">NASA Earth Observatory</a> reveals the evolution of the Columbia Glacier in southeastern Alaska. Columbia is among the fastest shrinking glaciers in the world, and the video documents its rapid retreat over the years.&nbsp;



Columbia Glacier is a large, multi-branched calving glacier that flows out of the Chugach Mountains to the Prince William Sound.&nbsp;



According to USGS, Columbia had a long history of stability prior to 1980, with a length 41 miles, and small, short-lived advances or retreats.



In the years since 1980, however, satellite images have captured Columbia’s alarming retreat. By using false-color images, scientists can distinguish between snow and ice, open water, vegetation, and rocky debris on the glacier’s surface.



The series of false-color images featured in today's video were acquired over the span of 35 years. You can see that by 2021, the glacier’s main branch had retreated about 15 miles from its initial position.



The Columbia Glacier has also lost more than 50 percent of its volume, mostly due to calving. <a href="https://www.earth.com/video/nasa-reveals-3d-visual-of-an-atmospheric-river/">NASA</a> reports that while climate change likely started the retreat, mechanical processes kept the disintegration going.



The NASA images are provided by Jesse Allen, Robert Simmon, Joshua Stevens, and Lauren Dauphin using data from Landsat satellites, from the U.S. Geological Survey, and data from MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite. The structure of Columbia’s moraine played a large role in the stability of the glacier before 1980. 



Like other tidewater glaciers, the Columbia built up a moraine over time, and the mixture of ice and rock functioned like a dam keeping out the sea. It was supported on one end by the shoreline and by the underwater terminal moraine at the other.



Video Credit: NASA Earth Observatory/&nbsp; NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio



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The rapid retreat of the Columbia Glacier

[sendtonews key="0879czfG3k-1785905-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from NASA...

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes how record-breaking heat expressed itself around the world in 2022.



Scientists have determined that 2022 was the 5th warmest year since 1880. Furthermore, the last nine consecutive years have been the warmest on record.



From devastating floods and wildfires to natural disasters like Hurricane Ian, 2022 showed us yet again how a warming climate affects people across the globe.&nbsp;



"As we look back at 20:22 and years past, we see that each year we better understand the challenges we face and how important it is to meet them," says NASA.



Video/ Image Credit: NASA Goddard



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2022 illustrated the consequences of a warming climate

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Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes Earth’s interconnected systems, and how this network is affected by rising temperatures.&nbsp;



During 2020, average global temperatures matched the hottest year on record. The hurricane season was also record-breaking, with many of the storms intensifying at extraordinary speeds. Hot water in the ocean is fuel for hurricanes. The satellite data shows that it's all one interconnected system showing how Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected.



According to NASA, dust swept up from Northern Africa plays a major role in the formation of hurricanes, and is also a key source of fertilization in the Amazon rainforest. As a result of<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/seagrass-wasting-disease-is-fueled-by-climate-change/"> climate</a> change, dust plumes are expected to decline, which will have an effect on vegetation far away.&nbsp;



Images from Earth-observing satellites show how the world’s plant life is affected by natural disasters, fires, and deforestation. Satellites also reveal how widespread changes in vegetation impact waterways,&nbsp; the climate, air quality. Satellites communicate by using radio waves to send signals to the antennas on the Earth. "Earth From Space" is a groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. 



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected

[sendtonews key="JbW4VsY53O-1632195-12187" type="single"] Satellites reveal how Earth's systems are interconnected...

Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://welcome.miami.edu/">University of Miami</a> Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science explores how changes in water temperatures have affected tiger shark habitats and movements in the North Atlantic Ocean. The study reveals that rising temperatures have caused the sharks to shift toward the poles over the past 40 years.



“Tiger shark annual migrations have expanded poleward, paralleling rising water temperatures,” explained study lead author Neil Hammerschlag. “These results have consequences for tiger shark conservation, since shifts in their movements outside of marine protected areas may leave them more vulnerable to commercial fishing.”



The researchers analyzed nine years of tracking data from satellite-tagged tiger sharks, combined with four decades of conventional tag and recapture data provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Cooperative Shark Tagging Program.



The experts found that during the last decade of record heat, for every one-degree Celsius increase in water temperatures, tiger sharks migrated further poleward by over 400 kilometers. They also migrated two weeks earlier than usual to waters off the northeastern coast of the United States.



“Given their role as apex predators, these changes to tiger shark movements may alter predator-prey interactions, leading to ecological imbalances, and more frequent encounters with humans,” concluded Professor Hammerschlag.



Video Credit: University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science



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Tiger sharks are shifting poleward as temperatures rise

Today’s Video of the Day from the University of Miami...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> is focused on the melt ponds that emerge during the spring and summer on the Greenland Ice Sheet, which is the largest ice mass in the northern hemisphere.



"Melt ponds are vast pools of open water that form on both sea ice and ice sheets and are visible as turquoise-blue pools of water in this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image," says ESA.



"When snow and ice melts atop glaciers, water flows in channels and streams and collects in depressions on the surface. These melt ponds can speed up the melting of the surrounding ice since they greatly reduce the ice’s ability to reflect sunlight."



"This can create a positive feedback where an increasing number of melt ponds absorb more heat which causes ice cover to melt even faster."



According to ESA, Greenland has been hit with a late-season heatwave that began in early September. This caused the type of melt event that usually occurs in the middle of summer.



"In a recent paper published in Nature Climate Change, scientists found that major sea-level rise from the melting of the Greenland ice cap is now ‘inevitable’ even if the burning of fossil fuels were to halt overnight," says ESA. "Using satellite observations of Greenland ice loss and ice cap from 2000 to 2019, the team found the losses will lead to a minimum rise of 27 cm regardless of climate change."



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Melt ponds on the Greenland Ice Sheet

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> describes how Earth is unique in our solar system for its ability to sustain liquid water on its surface. But now, the water cycle is shifting as the climate warms, and scientists must find ways to predict how these changes will affect water availability.



Overall, 96 percent of Earth's water is saltwater, and nearly all of freshwater is found in ice and groundwater. These sources of water are linked as it passes through solid, liquid and gas phases.



In a warmer climate, the water cycle will be transformed. It will be easier for water to evaporate and form clouds, and storms will become more frequent and intense. Some regions will get too much water, while others will be left without enough water. In addition, soil moisture will be lost - which threatens food security.



Scientists are using satellite data from over the last 40 years to track changes that are happening in the water cycle. This will ultimately help us prepare for extreme events and better manage our water resources, according to ESA.



Video Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Tracking changes in Earth's water cycle

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Saturn,-,High,Resolution,3d,Images,Presents,Planets,Of,The

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard Space Flight Center</a> features images of Saturn from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The photographs capture the start of the mysterious "spoke season" on Saturn - when unexplained features appear on its rings. 



According to NASA, both the cause of the spokes and their seasonal variability have yet to be fully explained by planetary scientists.



"Like Earth, Saturn is tilted on its axis and therefore has four seasons, though because of Saturn's much larger orbit, each season lasts approximately seven Earth years. Equinox occurs when the rings are tilted edge-on to the Sun," explains NASA.



"The spokes disappear when it is near summer or winter solstice on Saturn. (When the Sun appears to reach either its highest or lowest latitude in the northern or southern hemisphere of a planet.) As the autumnal equinox of Saturn's northern hemisphere on May 6, 2025, draws near, the spokes are expected to become increasingly prominent and observable."



Experts believe that the spokes may be a product of the planet's variable magnetic field. When magnetic fields interact with solar wind, an electrically charged environment is created. This phenomenon is visible on Earth as the northern lights.&nbsp;



"Scientists think that the smallest, dust-sized icy ring particles can become charged as well, which temporarily levitates those particles above the rest of the larger icy particles and boulders in the rings," says NASA.



The spokes were first observed in the early 1980s by NASA's Voyager mission. Depending on the angle of the rings, the spokes can appear dark or light.



"Thanks to Hubble's OPAL program, which is building an archive of data on the outer solar system planets, we will have longer dedicated time to study Saturn’s spokes this season than ever before," said NASA senior planetary scientist Amy Simon, head of the Hubble Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program.



"Despite years of excellent observations by the Cassini mission, the precise beginning and duration of the spoke season is still unpredictable, rather like predicting the first storm during hurricane season."



Video Credit: NASA Goddard&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Mysterious "spoke season" captured on Saturn

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Closeup,Of,Fresh,Green,The,Napier,Bush,Grass,As,Animal

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="http://www.ntu.edu.sg/">NTU Singapore</a> reveals that some plants can remove toxic heavy metals from soil.&nbsp;



The researchers analyzed samples of various tropical plant species to test for levels of heavy metals and metalloids. The study showed that there are existing plants with high levels of these contaminants, which means that these species are great candidates for drawing pollutants out of the soil.&nbsp;



Among the plants examined in the study, 12 species had accumulated several types of heavy metals and metalloids. These plants are widely available, including species that are native to Singapore.



“In a small nation like Singapore, land may be repurposed to support new development plans, so it is important that we have a green and sustainable way to remediate land that is contaminated," said Professor Lam Yeng Ming.



"We set out to uncover how to better make use of tropical plants to do phytoremediation and through advanced characterization techniques, we showed how some of these tropical plant species can be an environmentally friendly and literally a 'green' way to remove contaminants in soil."&nbsp;



"Phytoremediation also has benefits of cost effectiveness, simplicity of management, aesthetic advantages, and long-term applicability and sustainability. The strategy prevents erosion and metal leaching by stabilizing or accumulating heavy metals, so that helps reduce the risk of contaminant spread.”



Video Credit: NTU Singapore



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Plants help remove heavy metals from contaminated soil

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> describes why herbicides are not as effective in killing weeds anymore. In the 20th century, chemical companies developed thousands of herbicides. The most commonly used herbicide was glyphosate, which was introduced in 1974.



Over the past few decades, dozens of species of weeds have evolved resistance to glyphosate. Depending on the site of action, the part of the plant that an herbicide interacts with, weeds may even be resistant to herbicides that have not been developed yet.&nbsp;



With increasing resistance to glyphosate and other herbicides, weeds are - once again - becoming a major concern for farmers.&nbsp;



Video Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Weeds are becoming increasingly resistant to herbicides

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/">NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory</a> (JPL) describes a dust storm on Mars that was nearly twice the size of the United States. As the storm covered the southern hemisphere of the planet, some of NASA’s explorers had to delay their normal activities.



NASA’s Insight lander put itself in a "safe mode" for 11 days to conserve battery power because solar power was disrupted by the dust. The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter postponed flights until conditions improved.



"A fleet of NASA orbiters monitor Martian dust storms like this one and serve as lifelines to Earth by relaying data from the rovers and lander on the ground back to the team. This includes the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, MAVEN, and Odyssey," reports JPL.



"Dust storms like this recent one start close to the ground and are spread by wind as they rise – warming the cold Martian atmosphere."



The images in the video were captured by NASA’s Curiosity as the dust rolled in. A fleet of orbiters monitored the dust storm from above, relaying data from Mars’ explorers back to scientists on Earth.



Video &amp; Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

NASA monitors giant dust storms on Mars

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="http://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz. This strait provides the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean.



Qeshm is separated from the Iranian coast by the Clarence Strait, also known as Khuran.&nbsp;The Hara Forest Protected Area is a network of shallow waterways and forest located between the island and the mainland. This protected region is home to sea turtles, snakes, and more than 150 species of migrating birds.



Qeshm is famous for its wide range of&nbsp;ecotourist&nbsp;attractions, such as the&nbsp;Hara marine forests. According to environmentalists, about 1.5 percent of the world birds and 25 percent of Iran's native <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/female-hummingbirds-avoid-sexual-harassment-by-looking-like-males/">birds</a> annually migrate to the forests, which are the first national geo park in Iran.



Tourists are also drawn to the island to see an age-old Portuguese&nbsp;fort, historic mosques, the&nbsp;Seyyed Mozaffar&nbsp;and&nbsp;Bibi Maryam&nbsp;shrines, and the "Valley of Stars."



The average temperature on the island is 81 degress and the region is often hot and humid. From June to August, the island is described as being oppressively hot. The ideal time to visit is during the winter season. 



Video Credit: ESA&nbsp;



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Inhambane Bay in southeast Mozambique.&nbsp;



"Inhambane Bay is a deep inlet into which the small Mutamba River flows," says ESA. "On one side of the bay lies the historical city of Inhambane, capital of the Inhambane Province, while the sister city of Maxixe, the economic capital of Inhambane, sits across from it. The province is the second largest grower of cashews, after Nampula, and it also produces coconut and citrus fruits."



The beaches of Barra and Tofo are popular with tourists. There are also coral reefs along the long coastline of Inhambane, making it an ideal destination for scuba diving and snorkeling.



"Mozambique’s extensive coastline heightens the country’s vulnerability to tropical cyclones that develop in the Indian Ocean as well as storm surge flooding," says ESA.



"More than half of the population lives in low lying coastal areas, putting communities at risk. Inhambane Bay was dangerously close to where Cyclone Idai made landfall in 2019 causing widespread destruction to the country."



Video/ Image Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Inhambane Bay in southeast Mozambique

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency </a>&nbsp;features the Kangerlussuaq Glacier, one of the largest tidewater outlet glaciers in Greenland. The glacier is located on the east coast of the Greenland ice sheet.



As human-induced climate change continues to drive up temperatures, global ice loss is accelerating at an alarming rate. ESA reports that, over the past decade alone, 3.5 trillion tons of ice have melted from the Greenland ice sheet. This is enough to cover the UK with meltwater 15 meters deep.



Based on satellite imagery, researchers determined that Kangerlussuaq entered a new phase of rapid retreat and acceleration in 2017. In their study, published in <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.00123/full">Frontiers in Earth Science</a>,&nbsp; the experts report that the glacier's ice front is now at its most retreated position since the early 20th century.



"Given Kangerlussuaq’s previous impacts on both the magnitude and pattern of ice sheet wide mass loss, we predict that its new phase of retreat, acceleration and thinning will markedly enhance the south-east region’s contribution to increasing discharge from the ice sheet," wrote the study authors.&nbsp;&nbsp;



"More broadly, accurate forecasting of the ice sheet’s contribution to sea level rise will require a deeper understanding of, and responses to, these non-linear ice dynamic processes."



Video Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Kangerlussuaq Glacier on the Greenland ice sheet

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> describes the complex relationship between ocean and climate. ESA's Climate Change Initiative will help us understand how oceans influence the climate and how climate change is impacting the oceans.&nbsp;



"Earth’s oceans are huge heat stores, soaking up 93% of the excess heat from human activity over the past 70 years. Ocean currents redistribute heat around the planet, from the Equator to the poles. Where this ocean heat goes influences weather patterns and regional climate," explains ESA.



"As well as absorbing heat, oceans are a natural carbon sink, absorbing a quarter of carbon dioxide emissions from human activity. This has led to the acidification of ocean water, threating marine life."



The amount of heat and carbon dioxide soaked up by the ocean depends on specific variables, including phytoplankton, temperatures, waves, salinity, and ice cover. Satellites can be used to measure these variables from space.



"From their unique vantage point, satellites provide key information for understanding the complexities of our planet and monitoring environmental issues," says ESA.



Video Credit: ESA



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By <a href="mailto:csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Editor



Check us out on <a href="https://www.earth.com/earthsnap/">EarthSnap</a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls and Earth.com.

Ocean heat influences regional climate

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> describes the importance of monitoring the shape of the sea surface, which is constantly changing. These observations have many applications, such as ship routing, <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/the-modem-ocean-is-a-tough-place-for-whales-to-survive/">ocean</a> current forecasting, and debris tracking.



"A project supported by the Discovery element of ESA’s Basic Activities recently investigated a new technique to measure sea surface topography very precisely," reports ESA.



"The technique involves looking at satellite navigation (GNSS) signals that have been reflected off of the sea surface at very low angles. At these so-called grazing angles, waves and surface roughness have very little impact on the reflection process; the sea surface acts as a very smooth mirror."



Estel Cardellach is the principal investigator at the Institute for Space Studies of Catalonia, who first submitted the idea for the project.



“In a mirror-like reflection the phase of the signal can be tracked – it is continuous," said Cardellach. "Different surface heights result in different phase measurements. It gives a very precise measurement of the surface altitude at a few centimetres’ precision.”



The researchers developed a GNSS receiver and set up an experiment in the Balaeric Islands to collect signals from the receiver that were reflected off the sea surface. Ultimately, these signals will provide improved measurements of the shape of the sea surface.



Image/ Video Credit: ESA



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Monitoring the dynamic shape of the sea surface

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Aerial,Photo,Of,River,In,Amazon,Rainforest,Jungle,In,Peru

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center</a> describes how scientists are using autonomous sound sensors to monitor deforestation in the Amazon. By recording soundscapes, the experts can determine which animals are present through their distinct sounds.&nbsp;



Using this method, sounds can be used as scientific measurements to analyze the effects of deforestation. The researchers will gain a better understanding of how the acoustics of a forest can be used to measure its health.&nbsp;



"From space, parts of the Amazon rainforest that have previously been logged or burned may look lush and green, like a place buzzing with activity and full of sounds. But inside the rainforest, the animal life may tell a different story, of a harsh environment and a quieter soundscape," says NASA.



Video Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center&nbsp;



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By <a href="http://csexton@earth.com">Chrissy Sexton</a>, <a href="https://www.earth.com/staff/">Earth.com</a> Staff Writer

Monitoring deforestation in the Amazon through sounds

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