It's known as the "boring billion," a murky period in Earth's history between 1.8 billion and 800 million years ago, when life's complexity didn't extend much beyond single-celled organisms.



Apart from the occasional multicellular life form, most of the living species during that time period were simple, unicellular organisms that had minimal requirements for life. 



But don't mistake "boring" for insignificant. This epoch of evolution laid the foundation for the drama of complex multicellularity that would eventually lead to us.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-energy-fuel-for-evolution">Energy: Fuel for evolution</h2>



The boring billion period appears to mark a time when the evolution of complex life was delayed and conditions were so stable as to border on stagnant. 



Scientists state that oxygen levels at this time were drastically decreased and conditions were fairly harsh for most forms of life.



A new study by Michael Lynch of <a href="https://www.asu.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Arizona State University</a> has revealed that the transition from unicellular to multicellular life forms would have come at a cost.



Using the water flea, Daphnia, as a <a href="https://phys.org/tags/model+organism/">model organism</a>, the study shows that multicellular organisms require more than a tenfold increase in energy compared with the simpler, unicellular organisms characteristic of the boring billion period. 



"No one doubts that multicellularity can bring substantial advantages to the table, but the privilege of attaining such benefits comes at a steep investment cost," said Lynch, who directs the <a href="https://search.app?link=https%3A%2F%2Fbiodesign.asu.edu%2Fmechanisms-of-evolution%2F&amp;utm_campaign=aga&amp;utm_source=agsadl2%2Csh%2Fx%2Fgs%2Fm2%2F4" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Biodesign Center for Mechanisms of Evolution</a> at ASU.



The study emphasizes the importance of respiration and other metabolic processes in navigating the transition to more complex life forms. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-cost-of-complexity">Cost of complexity </h2>



Every organism, from the smallest bacterium to a human, is driven by energy. Having an entire body made of only one cell reduces the need for energy and nutrients to grow and reproduce. 



But multicellular organisms, like plants, animals, and fungi, have to maintain a multitude of cells in complex tissues, organs and structures. And this places a far higher energy demand on the organism.



As the cell count increases in a <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/how-life-and-environment-co-evolved-over-500-million-years/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">multicellular organism</a>, so does the demand on ATP synthase, the molecular machinery in cells that manufactures ATP, the universal energy currency. 



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><a href="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/multicelled-organisms_metazoan-daphnia_credit-Marek-Mis_1m.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img src="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/multicelled-organisms_metazoan-daphnia_credit-Marek-Mis_1s.webp" alt="A new study shows that multicelled organisms like the metazoan daphnia (pictured) require a tenfold increase in energy compared with protists for their growth, maintenance and survival. The high cost of multicellular existence is offset by the many evolutionary advantages afforded to advanced organisms, from simpler forms like daphnia all the way up to vertebrate species, including humans. Credit: Marek Miś" class="wp-image-1950209"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A new study shows that multicelled organisms like the metazoan daphnia (pictured) require a tenfold increase in energy compared with protists for their growth, maintenance and survival. The high cost of multicellular existence is offset by the many evolutionary advantages afforded to advanced organisms, from simpler forms like daphnia all the way up to vertebrate species, including humans. Credit: Marek Miś</figcaption></figure>



Each new cell in a multicellular body is another mouth to feed in terms of energy, and the cost increases with the number of cells.



The findings of the Daphnia study show that metazoans - the group that includes multicellular creatures - need a lot more ATP synthase complexes in each cell than their simpler, unicellular counterparts.



In fact, for every increment in body mass, these organisms require 30 to 50 times more oxygen than simpler, unicellular creatures. This additional oxygen supports the complex needs for metabolism, cellular communication, and tissue maintenance.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-size-comes-at-a-price">Size comes at a price</h2>



Growth isn't cheap, particularly for multicellular organisms. 



While larger, unicellular organisms, like some amoebas, become more efficient as they grow, multicellular organisms face unique challenges that require extra energy to sustain their larger sizes and more complex structures.



Given this steep energy price, why did multicellularity evolve at all? 



The answer seems to be that multicellular life offers evolutionary advantages, such as being able to consume unicellular organisms en masse, evade predators, and live in various environments.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-overcoming-energy-barriers">Overcoming energy barriers</h2>



To surmount the energetic challenges presented by <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/past-snowball-earth-conditions-drove-evolution-complex-multicellular-life/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">multicellularity</a>, organisms have developed remarkable adaptations to utilize their resources efficiently. 



One key adaptation is the division of labor between specialized cells, tissues, and organs; this specialization allows for optimized energy usage where cells perform distinct functions more efficiently than they would if they had to carry out all the different life activities.



For example, mitochondria within eukaryotic cells have evolved highly efficient pathways to generate ATP, thus maximizing the energy harvested from different substrates.



Furthermore, the development of vascular systems in plants and circulatory systems in animals allows for the effective distribution of energy resources, and ensures that all cells have access to the oxygen and nutrients necessary to produce energy.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-implications-of-the-boring-billion">Implications of the "boring billion"</h2>



Understanding the evolutionary narrative of the "boring billion" holds powerful implications for modern scientific research. 



This era not only reflects the energy-centric challenges of the past but also informs the fields of synthetic biology, evolutionary biology, and bioengineering.



By studying the metabolic pathways and energy efficiencies developed during this period, researchers can potentially design bio-inspired systems and organisms with enhanced functionalities and sustainability.



Furthermore, insights gained from this epoch's evolutionary innovations could pioneer future advancements in medical therapies, agriculture, and ecosystem management. 



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-future-research-directions">Future research directions</h2>



This study primarily focuses on aerobic, animal-like organisms. But there's a vast and varied spectrum of life out there, including plants and fungi, and the researchers plan to extend their investigations to these life forms. 



Future insights could shed light on why <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/biggest-known-space-cloud-of-life-building-complex-chemicals-discovered/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">multicellular life forms</a> took a considerable time to appear and diversify on our planet.



Multicellular life has high energy demands and this study suggests that the constraints of bioenergy could be a universal phenomenon that is applicable to any carbon-based, oxygen-breathing life, no matter where it exists in the universe.



The study is published in the journal <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2414742121" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</a>.



-----



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'Boring billion' wasn’t a dull period, it fueled a shift to complex life

It's known as the "boring billion," a murky period in Earth's history between 1.8 billion and 800 million years ago, when life's complexity didn't extend much beyond single-celled organisms. Apart from the occasional multicellular life form, most of the living species during that time period were simple, unicellular organisms that had minimal requirements for life. But don't mistake "boring" for insignificant. This epoch of evolution laid the foundation for the drama of complex multicellularity that would eventually lead to us. Energy: Fuel for evolution The boring billion...

Scientists Focus On Formation Of A Cold Water Climate Shield. Federal scientists using new technologies have mapped what is being called a Cold Water Climate Shield, an area spanning five western states that could support viable populations of native species if the region continues its warming trend.
Mapping the cold-water refuges for cutthroat trout, a favored sport fish among anglers, and threatened bull trout could help resource managers make decisions aimed at preserving populations of those and other cold-water native species in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana and Wyoming. Scientists Focus On Formation Of A Cold Water Climate Shield
Scientists say streams in the region have warmed up about a degree over the last three decades and are getting hotter.
"One of the things we're seeing is that the colder areas are typically in the headwaters," said Dan Isaak, a research fisheries <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/sick-endangered-orca-whale/">biologist</a> with the U.S. Forest Service in Boise. "Those are warming up a lot more slowly than streams at lower elevations."
The mapped area contains streams with temperatures preferred by cutthroat trout and bull trout but are too cold for non-native species, particularly brown trout and brook trout, thus forming the climate shield. The climate shield has practical applications, Isaak said.
"Rather than spending money to build artificial barriers on streams to prevent the upstream advance of invasive species (which is very expensive and commonly done in some areas), the climate refugia streams we're highlighting are so cold that you wouldn't need to build a barrier to preserve the native community," Isaak said in an email to The Associated Press.
Within this climate shield, scientists say some areas will remain capable of supporting bull trout even if the more extreme future climate models turn out accurate.
"It's quite possible much of the habitat for bull trout will become too warm," and it will disappear from those areas, said Mike Young, a research fisheries biologist for the U.S. Forest Service based in Missoula, Montana, also working on the climate shield. "But we think that even under extreme climate scenarios bull trout will persist in the lower 48."
Advances in stream temperature sensors and environmental DNA sampling, a new way to find out what species inhabit a stream, have provided a flood of information and allowed scientists to create the climate shield map.
Temperature sensors are glued to underwater rocks and can store hourly temperature recordings for a year. About 4,000 of the sensors are in streams in the five states. Isaak said there are about 16,000 more unique sites recording information less frequently plus information going back even further.
In total, he said, scientists have about 50 million hourly temperature recordings.
The other part of the Cold Water <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=climate&amp;cvid=7fc335b90dfd4ab096b619f12ddd4646&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">Climate</a> Shield involves environmental DNA sampling. That began about eight years ago and has radically changed how scientists survey streams. Rather than electroshocking stream sections and seeing what floats to the top, scientists can take a water sample and check it to see if a particular species is present.
"It's not only better, but it costs less," Young said. "You can suddenly afford to go places and sample very broadly."
The result is that entire river basins can be sampled, meaning streams that have never been sampled have now been analyzed or soon will be, Young said. That information could then be used for making decisions about where biologists should try to remove non-native brook trout, for example.
"Being able to make wise conservation investments is one of the most important things that we can do when protecting the biodiversity that we have," Young said.
Isaak said the Cold Water Climate Shield idea is being taken up in other western states as well, but is mostly just getting started in those areas.
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Scientists Focus On Formation Of A Cold Water Climate Shield

Scientists Focus On Formation Of A Cold Water Climate Shield....

Global Tension In Latest Round Of UN Climate Talks. African countries on Sunday dismissed an early draft of a U.N. climate accord as "unbalanced" and demanded amendments to even consider it at the final negotiating session before a landmark conference in Paris.
The move by the African bloc came on the eve of week-long talks in Bonn, Germany, on what's envisioned to become the most ambitious agreement ever to fight global warming. Global Tension In Latest Round Of UN Climate Talks
Delegates on Monday were supposed to start line-by-line editing a 20-page draft that contains multiple options on how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet.
But the <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/african-forest-elephants-are-running-out-of-fruit/">African</a> countries, many of which are among the most vulnerable to climate impacts such as desertification and sea level rise, said the draft "cannot be used as a basis for negotiation, as it is unbalanced, and does not reflect the African Group positions, and crosses the group's redlines."
Group spokesman Seyni Nafo told The Associated Press that the African countries want more emphasis on financial support to help poor countries cope with climate change.
Nafo said the group was confident that it would be allowed to make additions to the text before negotiations get underway.
"Our position is not to delay work, but to ensure that there's a fair basis for all," he said.
Some 150 countries - including top emitters China, the <a href="http://www.earth.com/image/severe-fire-threat-continues-in-the-western-united-states/">United States</a>, the European Union and India - have already made voluntary pledges to cut or curb their emissions after 2020, when the deal is supposed to take effect.
But several analyses show those pledges won't be enough to prevent levels of warming that many consider dangerous, so a key element of the <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=paris&amp;cvid=ee88ec5cb4884ee587d311888b45bdd9&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">Paris</a> deal would be a mechanism to raise those commitments over time.
"We don't want to make a picture, we want to make a movie," Netherlands climate envoy Michel Rentenaar said, insisting that the Paris agreement cannot freeze the current level of ambition on climate action.
The U.N. talks have made significant strides since a 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen failed to live up to expectations. For the first time all countries now agree they need to act against climate change, which scientists say is already transforming the planet through melting glaciers, rising sea levels, intensifying heat waves and warmer, more acidic oceans.
Though major sticking points remain, including how to spell out the different responsibilities of nations in various stages of development, rich and poor countries have moved closer in recent years.
"We have gone very far from the Copenhagen atmosphere," said Pa Ousman Jarju, Gambia's environment minister.
It would be a major setback if some countries reject the draft in Bonn, leaving negotiators with little time to come up with a new one before Paris.
Several delegates said they didn't expect that to happen, though the African move on Sunday underscored how easily the process, which is based on consensus, can be slowed down.
One of the most contentious issues is money. Rich countries have promised to provide $100 billion annually by 2020 to help poor countries reduce their emissions and deal with unavoidable impacts of climate change. But they are reluctant to make any commitments beyond that and say the most advanced developing nations should also chip in.
The World Resources Institute, a Washington-based environmental think tank, said negotiators must be prepared to get "their hands dirty" in Bonn and deal with the sticky issues before the Paris summit begins on Nov. 30.
"What happens in Bonn can pave the way for a universal agreement in Paris that can be the turning point on climate action that the world needs," the group said.
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Global Tension In Latest Round Of UN Climate Talks

Global Tension In Latest Round Of UN Climate Talks. African...

European Union Greenhouse Gas Emissions Down 23 Percent. The European Union, the world's No. 3 greenhouse gas polluter, says its emissions fell 4 percent last year, meaning the 28-nation bloc has already surpassed its target for 2020.
A report by the EU's <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=climate+change&amp;cvid=2c806419f248480abd97bdeedbff525c&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">environment</a> agency on Tuesday said 2014 emissions were 23 percent lower than in 1990. The EU's goal is to achieve 20 percent reductions by 2020, but the report said the bloc is headed for 24-25 percent cuts with current measures to fight climate change.
It said the drop in 2014 "was partly due to an unusually warm year, which lowered energy demand." European Union Greenhouse Gas <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/wooden-buildings-could-store-half-of-the-cement-industrys-co2-emissions/">Emissions</a> Down 23 Percent
EU Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete called the results "a strong signal" ahead of a December climate conference in Paris that "Europe stands by its commitments and that our climate and energy policies work."Human activities since the beginning of the <a title="Industrial Revolution" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution">Industrial Revolution</a> (around 1750) have produced a 45% increase in the <a title="Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere">atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide</a>, from 280 <a class="mw-redirect" title="Parts per million" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parts_per_million">ppm</a> in 1750 to 415 ppm in 2019. The last time the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was this high was over 3 million years ago. This increase has occurred despite the uptake of more than half of the emissions by various natural "sinks" involved in the <a title="Carbon cycle" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle">carbon cycle</a>.
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European Union Greenhouse Gas Emissions Down 23 Percent

European Union Greenhouse Gas Emissions Down 23 Percent. The European...

Global Tension In Latest Round Of UN Climate Talks. African countries on Sunday dismissed an early draft of a U.N. climate accord as "unbalanced" and demanded amendments to even consider it at the final negotiating session before a <a href="http://www.earth.com/video/central-italy-from-space/">landmark</a> conference in Paris.
The move by the African bloc came on the eve of week-long talks in Bonn, Germany, on what's envisioned to become the most ambitious agreement ever to fight global warming. Global Tension In Latest Round Of UN Climate Talks
Delegates on Monday were supposed to start line-by-line editing a 20-page draft that contains multiple options on how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet.
But the African countries, many of which are among the most vulnerable to climate impacts such as desertification and sea level rise, said the draft "cannot be used as a basis for negotiation, as it is unbalanced, and does not reflect the African Group positions, and crosses the group's redlines."
Group spokesman Seyni Nafo told The Associated Press that the African countries want more emphasis on financial support to help poor countries cope with <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=climate+change&amp;cvid=2c806419f248480abd97bdeedbff525c&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">climate</a> change.
Nafo said the group was confident that it would be allowed to make additions to the text before negotiations get underway.
"Our position is not to delay work, but to ensure that there's a fair basis for all," he said.
Some 150 countries - including top emitters China, the United States, the European Union and India - have already made voluntary pledges to cut or curb their emissions after 2020, when the deal is supposed to take effect.
But several analyses show those pledges won't be enough to prevent levels of warming that many consider dangerous, so a key element of the Paris deal would be a mechanism to raise those commitments over time.
"We don't want to make a picture, we want to make a movie," Netherlands climate envoy Michel Rentenaar said, insisting that the Paris agreement cannot freeze the current level of ambition on climate action.
The U.N. talks have made significant strides since a 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen failed to live up to expectations. For the first time all countries now agree they need to act against climate change, which scientists say is already transforming the planet through melting glaciers, rising sea levels, intensifying heat waves and warmer, more acidic oceans.
Though major sticking points remain, including how to spell out the different responsibilities of nations in various stages of development, rich and poor countries have moved closer in recent years.
"We have gone very far from the Copenhagen atmosphere," said Pa Ousman Jarju, Gambia's environment minister.
It would be a major setback if some countries reject the draft in Bonn, leaving negotiators with little time to come up with a new one before Paris.
Several delegates said they didn't expect that to happen, though the African move on Sunday underscored how easily the process, which is based on consensus, can be slowed down.
One of the most contentious issues is money. Rich countries have promised to provide $100 billion annually by 2020 to help poor countries reduce their emissions and deal with unavoidable impacts of climate change. But they are reluctant to make any commitments beyond that and say the most advanced developing nations should also chip in.
The World Resources Institute, a Washington-based environmental think tank, said negotiators must be prepared to get "their hands dirty" in Bonn and deal with the sticky issues before the Paris summit begins on Nov. 30.
"What happens in Bonn can pave the way for a universal agreement in Paris that can be the turning point on climate action that the world needs," the group said.
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Dali Lama Urges Strong Action Against Global . The Dalai Lama on Tuesday urged strong global action to limit global warming and to protect fragile environments, including the Himalayan glaciers and Tibetan plateau.
Calling climate change a "problem which human beings created," the 80-year-old Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader said all of humanity was now responsible for taking action. But instead, he said, "we are relying on praying to God or to <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=buddha&amp;cvid=16c6da95d7b141678137b9e19639b35c&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">Buddha</a>. Sometimes I feel this is very illogical."
He issued his plea in a pre-taped video released as part of a campaign launched by the Tibetan government-in-exile in the north Indian hill town of Dharmsala, where the Dalai Lama has been based since fleeing a <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/carbon-pricing-will-help-achieve-net-zero-emissions/">Chinese</a> military crackdown in Tibet. Dali Lama Urges Strong Action Against Global Warming
The government-in-exile said the campaign would continue through this year's U.N. climate change talks, where nations hope to conclude a new treaty for limiting climate-warming gas emissions. The exiled government will also send its own delegate to the talks, which start Nov. 30 in Paris, though it will not have a vote of its own.
"This is not a question of one nation or two nations. This is a question of humanity. Our world is our home," the Dalai Lama said. "There's no other planet where we may move or shift."
Acknowledging his advanced years, the Dalai Lama appealed to younger generations to "take a more active role in protecting this planet, including the Tibetan plateau."
Temperatures for Tibet's high-altitude plateau - referred to as the Roof of the World - are rising about three times faster than the global average, and are 1.3 degrees Celsius higher than they were 50 years ago. The Himalayas are also called the Third Pole, referring to the fact that they are covered in snow and ice and are particularly susceptible to climate change, like the North and South poles.
The government-in-exile also argued that Tibetans should be restored as the "true stewards" of the plateau, which has been under Chinese rule for decades and where Tibetans accuse Beijing of mining indiscriminately while forcing nomadic communities to move elsewhere.
"Tibetans must have a say on what happens on their land," said the exiled government's prime minister, Lobsang Sangay. "Tibetan nomads are the expert custodians of the alpine pastures, and their knowledge and experience must be recognized."
China has long understood the plateau's environmental importance and vulnerability, with some 40 percent of the world's fresh water locked into the frozen Himalayan glaciers and feeding seven major rivers that run through China, Nepal, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences studies environmental and climate change from its Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in the region - a 2.5 million-square-kilometer (966,000-square-mile) area that includes the Tibetan Autonomous Region as well as most of China's Qinghai province, parts of Sichuan and the southern Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang.
Up to 70 percent of the plateau is covered in permafrost, with large reserves of both carbon dioxide and methane trapped within the ice. Scientists say thawing could release long-stored emissions of both greenhouse gases. Methane can be 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping Earth's heat.
---
Associated Press writer Ashwini Bhatia contributed to this report.
---
Follow Katy Daigle on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/katydaigle" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://twitter.com/katydaigle</a>
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Dali Lama Urges Strong Action Against Global

Dali Lama Urges Strong Action Against Global . The Dalai...

European Union Greenhouse Gas Emissions Down 23 Percent. The European Union, the world's No. 3 greenhouse gas polluter, says its emissions fell 4 percent last year, meaning the 28-nation bloc has already surpassed its target for 2020.
A report by the EU's <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/environmental-era-of-pandemics/">environment</a> agency on Tuesday said 2014 emissions were 23 percent lower than in 1990. The EU's goal is to achieve 20 percent reductions by 2020, but the report said the bloc is headed for 24-25 percent cuts with current measures to fight climate change. European Union Greenhouse Gas Emissions Down 23 Percent
It said the drop in 2014 "was partly due to an unusually warm year, which lowered energy demand."
EU Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete called the results "a strong signal" ahead of a December climate conference in Paris that "Europe stands by its commitments and that our <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/climate-change">climate</a> and energy policies work."Climate change, periodic modification of <a class="md-crosslink" href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Earth">Earth</a>’s <a class="md-crosslink" href="https://www.britannica.com/science/climate-meteorology">climate</a> brought about as a result of changes in the <a class="md-crosslink" href="https://www.britannica.com/science/atmosphere">atmosphere</a> as well as interactions between the atmosphere and various other geologic, chemical, biological, and geographic factors within the Earth system.
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New understanding of changes in North Pacific ocean circulation over the past 1.2 million years could lead to better global climate models

An unprecedented analysis of North Pacific ocean circulation over the past 1.2 million years has found that sea ice formation in coastal regions is a key driver of deep ocean circulation, influencing climate on regional and global scales. Coastal sea ice formation takes place on relatively small scales, however, and is not captured well in global climate models, according to scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who conducted the study.

A paper on the new findings will be published in a future issue of the journal Paleoceanography and is currently available online.

"We have identified an important process that current global climate models don't adequately capture. Coastal sea ice formation may be important to future climate change because the arctic and subarctic regions are warming at twice the rate of other parts of the world," said first author Karla Knudson, a graduate student in Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz. Coastal Sea Ice Drives Ocean Circulation And Climate

When sea ice forms, it expels salt into the surrounding water, increasing the density of the water and causing it to sink, carrying oxygenated surface water into the depths. One result is a flow of cold deep water toward the equator and warm surface water toward the poles, and this "overturning circulation" plays a crucial role in moving heat around the globe.

"It helps to modulate the climate by transferring heat from the equator to the poles," said coauthor Christina Ravelo, professor of ocean sciences at UC Santa Cruz.

This process (also called "thermohaline circulation") has received less attention in the North Pacific than in the North Atlantic, where the formation of North Atlantic Deep Water is a powerful driver of global ocean circulation and climate. In the North Pacific, overturning circulation driven by formation of the North Pacific Intermediate Water is not as strong as in the North Atlantic, but it plays a major role in the region's climate.

In 2009, when Ravelo led an expedition of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) to the Bering Sea (with co-chief scientist Kozo Takahashi of Kyushu University, Japan), one of her main goals was to investigate the role of the North Pacific Intermediate Water in climate change. The expedition drilled sediment cores from the floor of the Bering Sea that preserve records of the regional climate and ocean circulation covering the past 1.2 million years, much longer than any other oceanographic records from that region. By analyzing these records, Knudson and Ravelo found that the strength of the overturning circulation in the North Pacific is inherently linked to global climate changes, but not in the way scientists had previously thought.

The sediment cores used in this study cover a period when the planet went through many climate cycles driven by variations in Earth's orbit, from extreme glacial periods such as the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago, when massive ice sheets covered the northern parts of Europe and North <a href="http://www.earth.com/video/earth-from-space-the-amazon-river/">America</a>, to relatively warm interglacial periods with climates more like today's.

Previous studies based on global climate models indicated that the overturning circulation in the North Pacific and North Atlantic responded in opposite ways to major shifts in global climate. During glacial periods, sea level falls as water gets locked up in the ice sheets, and in extreme cases the Bering Strait connecting the Bering Sea to the Arctic Ocean closes and becomes a land bridge. This shuts off the flow of relatively fresh North Pacific water into the saltier North Atlantic, leading to increased salinity in the North Atlantic and stronger overturning circulation there.

At the same time, the thinking went, a fresher North Pacific would have weaker circulation. This oceanic "seesaw" would result in a cooling effect in one ocean and a warming effect in the other. But that's not what the sediment cores revealed. "We found that the overturning circulation actually strengthens in both oceans when the Bering Strait is closed," Knudson said.

What the climate models were missing, she said, was the strong brine production from sea ice formation in the Bering Sea. The global climate models do a good job of simulating the process of sea ice formation over large areas in the open ocean. But the critical coastal process, which actually generates more of the deep water, occurs on smaller scales and is only captured in high-resolution regional climate models, Knudson said.

The Bering Sea is less important during warm periods like today, when wintertime sea ice formation in the Sea of Okhotsk generates most of the North Pacific Intermediate Water. But the same process of sea ice formation and brine production along coastal shelves plays a critical role wherever it occurs.

"These small-scale processes might be important to understanding the full impact of climate change," Ravelo said. "As the climate gets warmer, we could see reduced sea ice formation in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Arctic. So it would be nice for the climate models to have sufficient resolution to be able to predict the impact of changes in coastal sea ice."

Knudson and Ravelo based their findings on an analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes in the calcium carbonate shells of tiny marine organisms called foraminifera, which are preserved in seafloor sediments. Chemical signatures of the ocean water the organisms lived in are locked into the composition of their shells, and researchers can analyze them for evidence of past water temperatures and other oceanographic conditions.

---

<a href="http://www.ucsc.edu" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">University of California Santa Cruz</a>

Coastal Sea Ice Drives Ocean Circulation And Climate

New understanding of changes in North Pacific ocean circulation over...

Dali Lama Urges Strong Action Against Global Warming. The Dalai Lama on Tuesday urged strong global action to limit global warming and to protect fragile environments, including the Himalayan glaciers and Tibetan plateau.
Calling climate change a "problem which human beings created," the 80-year-old Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader said all of humanity was now responsible for taking action. But instead, he said, "we are relying on praying to God or to Buddha. Sometimes I feel this is very illogical."
He issued his plea in a pre-taped video released as part of a campaign launched by the Tibetan government-in-exile in the north Indian hill town of Dharmsala, where the Dalai Lama has been based since fleeing a Chinese military crackdown in Tibet.
The government-in-exile said the campaign would continue through this year's U.N. climate change talks, where nations hope to conclude a new treaty for limiting climate-warming gas emissions. The exiled government will also send its own delegate to the talks, which start Nov. 30 in Paris, though it will not have a vote of its own.
"This is not a question of one nation or two nations. This is a question of humanity. Our world is our home," the Dalai Lama said. "There's no other planet where we may move or shift."
Acknowledging his advanced years, the Dalai Lama appealed to younger generations to "take a more active role in protecting this planet, including the Tibetan plateau."
Temperatures for Tibet's high-altitude plateau - referred to as the Roof of the World - are rising about three times faster than the global average, and are 1.3 degrees Celsius higher than they were 50 years ago. The Himalayas are also called the Third Pole, referring to the fact that they are covered in snow and ice and are particularly susceptible to climate change, like the North and South poles.
The government-in-exile also argued that Tibetans should be restored as the "true stewards" of the plateau, which has been under Chinese rule for decades and where Tibetans accuse Beijing of mining indiscriminately while forcing nomadic communities to move elsewhere.
"Tibetans must have a say on what happens on their land," said the exiled government's prime minister, Lobsang Sangay. "Tibetan nomads are the expert custodians of the alpine pastures, and their knowledge and experience must be recognized." Dali Lama Urges Strong Action Against Global Warming
China has long understood the plateau's environmental importance and vulnerability, with some 40 percent of the world's fresh water locked into the frozen Himalayan glaciers and feeding seven major rivers that run through China, Nepal, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences studies environmental and climate change from its Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research in the region - a 2.5 million-square-kilometer (966,000-square-mile) area that includes the Tibetan Autonomous Region as well as most of China's Qinghai province, parts of Sichuan and the southern Uygur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang.
Up to 70 percent of the plateau is covered in permafrost, with large reserves of both carbon dioxide and methane trapped within the ice. Scientists say thawing could release long-stored emissions of both greenhouse gases. Methane can be 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping Earth's heat.
---
Associated Press writer Ashwini Bhatia contributed to this report.
---
Follow Katy Daigle on Twitter at <a href="http://twitter.com/katydaigle" target="_blank" rel="noopener">http://twitter.com/katydaigle</a>
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Dali Lama Urges Strong Action Against Global Warming

Dali Lama Urges Strong Action Against Global Warming. The Dalai...

September 2015 Was Hottest Month In Recorded History. This past September 2015 was the hottest ever worldwide - the seventh monthly record set this year.
The National <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=oceanic&amp;cvid=82a080e4eb604fe191c4ccdcd839ccee&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">Oceanic</a> and Atmospheric Administration calculated a global temperature for September of 60.62 degrees (15.9 degrees Celsius), beating the record set in 2014.
Seven of the nine months this year have broken monthly global heat records, tying 1998 for the most monthly heat records broken. This year, only January and April did not surpass records going back to 1880. September 2015 Was Hottest Month In Recorded History
Climate scientists blame man-made global warming and <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/coral-cores-el-nino-events/">El Nino.</a>
This is has been the hottest first nine months of any year. NOAA climate scientist Jessica Blunden said it would take a highly unlikely cold stretch the rest of the year for 2015 not to pass 2014 as the hottest on record.September 2015 had the largest departure of temperature from average of any month among all 1629 months in the record that began in January 1880, said NOAA's <a href="https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/global/201509">National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)</a> on Wednesday. (Note that since July and August are typically the warmest months globally in absolute terms, September was not Earth's warmest month in that regard.) <a href="http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt">NASA</a> rated September 2015 slightly cooler, as the 2nd warmest September on record, falling below September 2014's mark.
© 2015 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.

September 2015 Was Hottest Month In Recorded History

September 2015 Was Hottest Month In Recorded History. This past...

Coastal Sea Ice Drives Ocean Circulation And Climate. New understanding of changes in North Pacific ocean circulation over the past 1.2 million years could lead to better global climate models

An unprecedented analysis of North Pacific ocean circulation over the past 1.2 million years has found that sea ice formation in coastal regions is a key driver of deep ocean circulation, influencing climate on regional and global scales. Coastal sea ice formation takes place on relatively small scales, however, and is not captured well in global climate models, according to scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who conducted the study.

A paper on the new findings will be published in a future issue of the journal Paleoceanography and is currently available online.

"We have identified an important process that current global climate models don't adequately capture. Coastal sea ice formation may be important to future climate change because the arctic and subarctic regions are warming at twice the rate of other parts of the world," said first author Karla Knudson, a graduate student in Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz.

When sea ice forms, it expels salt into the surrounding water, increasing the density of the water and causing it to sink, carrying oxygenated surface water into the depths. One result is a flow of cold deep water toward the equator and warm surface water toward the poles, and this "overturning circulation" plays a crucial role in moving heat around the globe.

"It helps to modulate the climate by transferring heat from the equator to the poles," said coauthor Christina Ravelo, professor of ocean sciences at UC Santa Cruz.

This process (also called "thermohaline circulation") has received less attention in the North Pacific than in the North Atlantic, where the formation of North Atlantic Deep Water is a powerful driver of global ocean circulation and climate. In the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/benefits-of-sea-otters-in-the-north-pacific-greatly-outweigh-costs/">North Pacific</a>, overturning circulation driven by formation of the North Pacific Intermediate Water is not as strong as in the North Atlantic, but it plays a major role in the region's climate.

In 2009, when Ravelo led an expedition of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) to the Bering Sea (with co-chief scientist Kozo Takahashi of Kyushu University, Japan), one of her main goals was to investigate the role of the North Pacific Intermediate Water in climate change. The expedition drilled sediment cores from the floor of the Bering Sea that preserve records of the regional climate and ocean circulation covering the past 1.2 million years, much longer than any other oceanographic records from that region. By analyzing these records, Knudson and Ravelo found that the strength of the overturning circulation in the North Pacific is inherently linked to global climate changes, but not in the way scientists had previously thought.

The sediment cores used in this study cover a period when the planet went through many climate cycles driven by variations in Earth's orbit, from extreme glacial periods such as the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago, when massive ice sheets covered the northern parts of Europe and North America, to relatively warm interglacial periods with climates more like today's.

Previous studies based on global climate models indicated that the overturning circulation in the North Pacific and North Atlantic responded in opposite ways to major shifts in global climate. During glacial periods, sea level falls as water gets locked up in the ice sheets, and in extreme cases the Bering Strait connecting the Bering Sea to the Arctic Ocean closes and becomes a land bridge. This shuts off the flow of relatively fresh North Pacific water into the saltier North Atlantic, leading to increased salinity in the North Atlantic and stronger overturning circulation there.

At the same time, the thinking went, a fresher North Pacific would have weaker circulation. This oceanic "seesaw" would result in a cooling effect in one ocean and a warming effect in the other. But that's not what the sediment cores revealed. "We found that the overturning circulation actually strengthens in both oceans when the Bering Strait is closed," Knudson said.

What the climate models were missing, she said, was the strong brine production from sea ice formation in the Bering Sea. The global climate models do a good job of simulating the process of sea ice formation over large areas in the open ocean. But the critical coastal process, which actually generates more of the deep water, occurs on smaller scales and is only captured in high-resolution regional climate models, Knudson said.

The Bering Sea is less important during warm periods like today, when wintertime sea ice formation in the Sea of Okhotsk generates most of the North Pacific Intermediate Water. But the same process of sea ice formation and brine production along coastal shelves plays a critical role wherever it occurs.

"These small-scale processes might be important to understanding the full impact of climate change," Ravelo said. "As the climate gets warmer, we could see reduced sea ice formation in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Arctic. So it would be nice for the climate models to have sufficient resolution to be able to predict the impact of changes in coastal sea ice."

Knudson and Ravelo based their findings on an analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes in the calcium carbonate shells of tiny marine organisms called foraminifera, which are preserved in seafloor sediments. Chemical signatures of the ocean water the organisms lived in are locked into the composition of their shells, and researchers can analyze them for evidence of past water temperatures and other oceanographic conditions.

---

<a href="http://www.ucsc.edu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of California Santa Cruz</a>

Coastal Sea Ice Drives Ocean Circulation And Climate. New understanding...

Coastal Sea Ice Drives Ocean Circulation And Climate. New understanding of changes in North Pacific ocean circulation over the past 1.2 million years could lead to better global climate models

An unprecedented analysis of North Pacific ocean circulation over the past 1.2 million years has found that sea ice formation in coastal regions is a key driver of deep ocean circulation, influencing climate on regional and global scales. Coastal sea ice formation takes place on relatively small scales, however, and is not captured well in global climate models, according to scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who conducted the study.

A paper on the new findings will be published in a future issue of the journal Paleoceanography and is currently available online.

"We have identified an important process that current global climate models don't adequately capture. Coastal sea ice formation may be important to future climate change because the arctic and subarctic regions are warming at twice the rate of other parts of the world," said first author Karla Knudson, a graduate student in Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz.

When sea ice forms, it expels salt into the surrounding water, increasing the density of the water and causing it to sink, carrying oxygenated surface water into the depths. One result is a flow of cold deep water toward the equator and warm surface water toward the poles, and this "overturning circulation" plays a crucial role in moving heat around the globe.

"It helps to modulate the climate by transferring heat from the equator to the poles," said coauthor Christina Ravelo, professor of ocean sciences at UC Santa Cruz.

This process (also called "thermohaline circulation") has received less attention in the North Pacific than in the North Atlantic, where the formation of North Atlantic Deep Water is a powerful driver of global ocean circulation and climate. In the North Pacific, overturning circulation driven by formation of the North Pacific Intermediate Water is not as strong as in the North Atlantic, but it plays a major role in the region's climate.

In 2009, when Ravelo led an expedition of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) to the Bering Sea (with co-chief scientist Kozo Takahashi of Kyushu University, Japan), one of her main goals was to investigate the role of the North Pacific Intermediate Water in climate change. The expedition drilled sediment cores from the floor of the Bering Sea that preserve records of the regional climate and ocean circulation covering the past 1.2 million years, much longer than any other oceanographic records from that region. By analyzing these records, Knudson and Ravelo found that the strength of the overturning circulation in the North Pacific is inherently linked to global climate changes, but not in the way scientists had previously thought.

The sediment cores used in this study cover a period when the planet went through many climate cycles driven by variations in Earth's orbit, from extreme glacial periods such as the Last Glacial Maximum about 20,000 years ago, when massive ice sheets covered the northern parts of Europe and North America, to relatively warm interglacial periods with climates more like today's.

Previous studies based on global climate models indicated that the overturning circulation in the North Pacific and North Atlantic responded in opposite ways to major shifts in global climate. During glacial periods, sea level falls as water gets locked up in the ice sheets, and in extreme cases the Bering Strait connecting the Bering Sea to the Arctic Ocean closes and becomes a land bridge. This shuts off the flow of relatively fresh North Pacific water into the saltier North Atlantic, leading to increased salinity in the North Atlantic and stronger overturning circulation there.

At the same time, the thinking went, a fresher <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/benefits-of-sea-otters-in-the-north-pacific-greatly-outweigh-costs/">North Pacific</a> would have weaker circulation. This oceanic "seesaw" would result in a cooling effect in one ocean and a warming effect in the other. But that's not what the sediment cores revealed. "We found that the overturning circulation actually strengthens in both oceans when the Bering Strait is closed," Knudson said.

What the climate models were missing, she said, was the strong brine production from sea ice formation in the Bering Sea. The global climate models do a good job of simulating the process of sea ice formation over large areas in the open ocean. But the critical coastal process, which actually generates more of the deep water, occurs on smaller scales and is only captured in high-resolution regional climate models, Knudson said.

The Bering Sea is less important during warm periods like today, when wintertime sea ice formation in the Sea of Okhotsk generates most of the North Pacific Intermediate Water. But the same process of sea ice formation and brine production along coastal shelves plays a critical role wherever it occurs.

"These small-scale processes might be important to understanding the full impact of climate change," Ravelo said. "As the climate gets warmer, we could see reduced sea ice formation in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Arctic. So it would be nice for the climate models to have sufficient resolution to be able to predict the impact of changes in coastal sea ice."

Knudson and Ravelo based their findings on an analysis of carbon and oxygen isotopes in the calcium carbonate shells of tiny marine organisms called foraminifera, which are preserved in seafloor sediments. Chemical signatures of the ocean water the organisms lived in are locked into the composition of their shells, and researchers can analyze them for evidence of past water temperatures and other oceanographic conditions.

---

<a href="http://www.ucsc.edu" target="_blank" rel="noopener">University of California Santa Cruz</a>

Poll: 76 Percent Of Americans Believe Climate Change Is Happening. The latest results reveal the largest consensus since political scientists at Texas started polling on the subject in 2012.

Slowly but surely, attitudes about global warming among the American public are beginning to more closely reflect those held by scientists.

The latest results from the University of <a href="http://www.earth.com/video/earth-from-space-houston-texas/">Texas</a>, Austin Energy Poll show that more than three out of every four Americans think "climate change is happening" -- 76 percent of respondents. Even the majority of Republicans now acknowledge global warming, with 59 percent saying the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change">climate</a> is changing.Poll: 76 Percent Of Americans Believe Climate Change Is Happening

The latest results reveal the largest consensus since political scientists at Texas started polling on the subject in 2012 -- and a 68 percent increase since last year.

"This groundbreaking public opinion poll measures and reports biannually (October and April) on consumer opinions and attitudes toward energy consumption, pricing, development and regulation," researchers write on the homepage explaining the Energy Poll.

Among the drivers of climate change implicated by believers, deforestation, coal, oil and natural gas beat out natural forces (not man made), indicating that the majority of respondents acknowledge climate change as at least partially anthropogenic.

The percentage of Americans who deny climate change flat out also dropped in the latest findings, from 22 percent in 2012 to 14 percent.

---

Credit: UPI

Poll: 76 Percent Of Americans Believe Climate Change Is Happening

Poll: 76 Percent Of Americans Believe Climate Change Is Happening....

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Nushagak Bay, a large estuary in southwest Alaska. Nushagak runs mainly north to south and exits in Bristol Bay, a large body of water in the Bering Sea.



"The bay is primarily fed by the Nushagak River, which begins in the Alaska Range and flows southwest approximately 450 km. The bay is also fed by several additional rivers including the Wood, Igushik, Snake and Weary rivers," says ESA.



"The dark colors of the Nushagak River are most likely due to tannins or lignins (chemical substances found in plants). Tannins and lignins from roots, leaves, seeds, bark and soil can leach into the water and give it a brown or even black colour. The sediments then flow southwards where it is mixed with the bluer waters of the bay."



Video/ Image 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

Nushagak Bay in southwest Alaska

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> (ACS) reveals that proteins on flu viruses are actually flexible, tilting and waving in a “breath-like” motion. According to the experts, these proteins could be used to better defend against the flu.



"The main antigenic targets of influenza virus are two surface glycoproteins, hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA). Whereas the structural and dynamical properties of both glycoproteins have been studied previously, the understanding of their plasticity in the whole-virion context is fragmented," wrote the researchers.



To investigate, the team conducted detailed simulations of the influenza A H1N1 virion, or the swine flu. The experts concluded that the visualizations show many new vulnerable states of flu viruses, which could improve future vaccines and antiviral drugs.



Video/ Image Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



---



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.

Flu viruses are more flexible than expected

[sendtonews key="G9bUoxcjr4-2511624-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from the...

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Lake Trasimeno, which is located west of Perugia in central Italy. It is the fourth largest lake in the country. While Trasimeno’s water level varies, it has a maximum depth of approximately six meters.&nbsp;



"In this Copernicus Sentinel-2 image, captured on 6 August 2022, the lake’s emerald green colour is likely due to the presence of phytoplankton. Streaks in the water, particularly visible in the west, indicate the presence of soil and sediments which have been stirred up by winds. Dark colored waters in the southern part of the lake indicate a presence of submerged and floating macrophytes (aquatic plants) as well as algae," says ESA.



"Surrounded by hills on three sides, Trasimeno is subject to heavy storms created by winds, especially from the north and west. There are three islets in the lake: Maggiore, Minore and Polvese (the largest). The lake’s shores are sparsely inhabited with only two popular villages: Castiglione del Lago and Passignano sul Trasimeno."



"Italy is experiencing its worst drought in 70 years which has affected drinking water supplies, hydroelectric power and agricultural production. High temperatures, hot winds and lack of rainfall are the main causes of drought in the Umbrian region which saw Lake Trasimeno’s drop 1.3 m, reaching the limit of the hydrometric zero in July 2022."



Video/Image Credit: ESA&nbsp;



---



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

Lake Trasimeno in Central Italy

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> describes a new self-powered nanosensor that can instantly detect mercury contamination with the tap of a finger.&nbsp;



The oxidized form of mercury can be harmful when it is ingested through contaminated water or food. This makes it necessary for experts to develop sensors that can quickly and accurately detect the presence of mercury.&nbsp;



Zong-Hong Lin and colleagues have now created a triboelectric nanosensor (TENS) that can detect mercury by simply by touching a sample. According to the researchers, their TENS could serve as the basis for similar devices to safely and remotely monitor other pollutants.



Video Credit: American Chemical Society&nbsp;



---



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.

Detecting mercury contamination with the tap of a finger

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Kainji Lake, a reservoir on the Niger River.



In 1968, Kainji Lake was created by the construction of the Kainji Dam. The Niger River, the third longest in Africa, enters the lake in the north.&nbsp;



According to <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/rivers-in-the-american-west-are-a-lifesaving-resource-for-birds/">ESA</a>, the creation of the lake submerged Foge Island and the town of Bussa and permanently flooded other riverine settlements, leaving around 50,000 people displaced.&nbsp;



Large parts of Foge Island are temporarily exposed during low water tides, and the land is often used by migrating fishermen. Kainji Dam is a dam across the Niger River in Niger State of Central Nigeria. 



Wild mammals occur at relatively low densities due to illegal hunting. Lake Kainji has suffered a dramatic decline as a fishery due to the high numbers of artisanal and subsistence fisherfolk using the lake. It has been suggested that a period of closure, together with controlled fishing rights may help improve fish stocks.



Kainji Lake National Park is the oldest of its kind in Nigeria. The park contains three distinct areas: a part of the Kainji Lake, the Borgu Game Reserve to the west of the lake, and the Zugurma Game Reserve to the southeast. The park is home to around 65 mammal species, 350 bird species, and 30 species of reptiles and amphibians. 



Video/ Image Credit: European Space Agency&nbsp;



---



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.

Kainji Lake in north central Nigeria

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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



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.

Designing crops that can beat the heat

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.acs.org/">American Chemical Society</a> explores the ability of salt to transform the way that foods and beverages taste. Salt is known to cover up undesirable flavors, such as bitterness in coffee or beer, but how exactly does sodium chloride change the taste of other compounds?



One previous study showed that, not only does salt suppress bitterness, but also enhances sweetness and sourness. Another study revealed that bitterness reduction by salt seems to be happening at the tongue receptor level as well as in the brain.&nbsp;



While it is known that salt taste is mediated by the presence of sodium channels in the form of taste buds, experts believe that there is also an unknown receptor responsible for how we taste salt that has not yet been identified.&nbsp;



Video Credit: ACS Reactions



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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.

How does salt makes things taste better?

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Santiago, the capital city of Chile. The city is located in the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Region, which has a population of about eight million people.&nbsp;



'The weather of Santiago resembles the Mediterranean climate with dry and warm summers with temperatures reaching up to 35°C (from October to March) and cool and humid winters that can drop to 0°C (from April to September)."



"The city lies in the centre of the country’s central valley around 80 km from the Pacific Ocean to the west and borders Argentina to the east. A tiny part of Argentina is visible in the top-right corner of the image where the mountain crest of the Andes Mountains acts as a divider between the two countries," says ESA.



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.

Santiago, Chile in South America

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Spiral,Galaxy,,Illustration,Of,Milky,Way

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Astronomers at <a href="https://www.jhu.edu/">Johns Hopkins University</a> have created an interactive map of the universe, including the actual position and real colors of 200,000 galaxies. The map allows the public to access data that was previously only available to scientists.



The map was developed using data collected by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For over two decades, a telescope in New Mexico was aimed at slightly different locations to capture the night sky.&nbsp;



"Growing up I was very inspired by astronomy pictures, stars, nebulae and galaxies, and now it's our time to create a new type of picture to inspire people," said map creator Brice Ménard, a professor at Johns Hopkins. "Astrophysicists around the world have been analyzing this data for years, leading to thousands of scientific papers and discoveries. But nobody took the time to create a map that is beautiful, scientifically accurate, and accessible to people who are not scientists. Our goal here is to show everybody what the universe really looks like."



"In this map, we are just a speck at the very bottom, just one pixel. And when I say we, I mean our galaxy, the Milky Way which has billions of stars and planets. We are used to seeing astronomical pictures showing one galaxy here, one galaxy there or perhaps a group of galaxies. But what this map shows is a very, very different scale."



"From this speck at the bottom, we are able to map out galaxies across the entire universe, and that says something about the power of science."



The <a href="https://mapoftheuniverse.net/">interactive map</a> is available online, where it can be downloaded for free.



Video Credit: Johns Hopkins&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



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Interactive map of the universe includes 200,000 galaxies

[sendtonews key="e4ZG0Jawp3-2374785-12187" type="single"] Astronomers at Johns Hopkins University have created...

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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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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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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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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features Dublin, the capital and largest city of Ireland. Beyond its pub culture, Dublin is known as a modern culinary destination and a UNESCO City of Literature.



"Dublin is located near the midpoint of Ireland’s east coast in the province of Leinster. The city, which covers an area of around 115 square kilometers, is bordered by the Dublin Mountains, a low mountain range to the south, and is surrounded by flat farmland to the north and west," says ESA.



"The city straddles the River Liffey, which rises in the Wicklow Mountains and flows around 80 kilometers eastwards through the city of Dublin, in which it is canalised and bordered with quays. It then empties into Dublin Bay, an arm of the Irish Sea."



Dublin has an abundance of green spaces, including one of the largest enclosed public parks in any European capital city. Phoenix Park, which was originally formed as a royal hunting park in the 1660s, includes 707 hectares of green space.



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



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The city of Dublin on Ireland's east coast

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Today's Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain. The image was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission.



"Together with the provinces of Huesca and Teruel, Zaragoza formed the old kingdom of Aragon. Its capital, also called Zaragoza (not visible in this image) is home to around half of Aragon’s population," says ESA.



"The Ebro River can be seen winding its way through the province from west to east in this image. Between its source in the Cantabrian Mountains in the northwest and its delta on the Mediterranean coast, the Ebro River is fed by more than 200 tributaries as it flows 910 km across much of northern Spain."



Since rainfall is very scarce in this region, irrigation in the Ebro basin is critically important. In the valleys surrounding the Ebro River, many fields are used for growing crops such as corn, wheat, and barley.



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



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The province of Zaragoza in northeast Spain

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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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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.

Wetlands are a major source of methane emissions

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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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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.

The rapid retreat of the Columbia Glacier

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Today’s Video of the Day from the <a href="https://www.esa.int/">European Space Agency</a> features the Pyrenees Mountains, which form a natural boundary between France and Spain in southwest Europe.



The mountain range is 430 kilometers in length. It stretches from the Mediterranean Sea on the east to the Atlantic Ocean on the west.



At an elevation of 3404 meters, Pico de Aneto is the highest mountain peak in the Pyrenees, and the third-highest peak in Spain. Pico de Aneto is located in the Posets-Maladeta Natural Park, which spans more than 82,000 acres.&nbsp;



"Geological studies have revealed that the Pyrenees Mountains have been around for longer than the Alps, with their sediments first deposited in coastal basins during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras," reports ESA.



"The entire mountain range formed due to the upwelling of large sedimentary rocks by the collision of the Iberian and the Eurasian plate around 100 to 150 million years ago, followed by intense erosion from ice and water."



The western Pyrenees receive more precipitation due to moisture blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean. The mountain range contains many lakes, several small glaciers, and some of the highest waterfalls in Europe.



Video &amp; 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.

The Pyrenees Mountains in southwest Europe

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Today’s Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.stowers.org/">Stowers Institute for Medical Research</a> describes why experts are studying zebrafish to gain a better understanding of how the immune system responds to injury. Zebrafish have the ability to repair and regenerate organs.



“Organ regeneration offers an exciting opportunity for studying the immune system and to inquire why some species can regenerate organs like the heart or missing limbs while others like humans cannot,” explained Dr. Tatjana Piotrowski.



Zebrafish sensory organ hair cells are an ideal system to investigate the pathways and cell types involved in regeneration since they are easily destroyed with antibiotics and begin regenerating within five hours. This enabled the researchers to identify the exact timing and genetic programs for each anti-inflammatory macrophage activation state.&nbsp;



“Our hypothesis is that human macrophages do not receive the proper chemical activation 'cocktail' to instruct pro-regenerative processes,” said Dr. Nicolas Denans. “Identifying the molecular recipe of macrophage activation in zebrafish may one day enable us to design regenerative immunotherapies in humans.”&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“The new evidence is a valuable resource for comparative studies on the genetic programs involved in macrophage-mediated repair and regeneration. In other words, different types of injuries may induce different kinds of inflammatory responses. We want to decipher whether this 'language' is universal or if there are a variety of dialects."



Video Credit: Stowers Institute for Medical Research&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.

How the immune system responds to injury

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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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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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2022 illustrated the consequences of a warming climate

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Today's Video of the Day from <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/goddard">NASA Goddard</a> describes two exoplanets that are orbiting a star 218 light-years away. A team of researchers led by the University of Montreal has found evidence that these planets are "water worlds."



The experts used data from NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes. They discovered that exoplanets Kepler-138 c and Kepler-138 could be composed largely of water.



"We previously thought that planets that were a bit larger than Earth were big balls of metal and rock, like scaled-up versions of Earth, and that's why we called them super-Earths," explained study co-author Björn Benneke.&nbsp;



"However, we have now shown that these two planets, Kepler-138 c and d, are quite different in nature and that a big fraction of their entire volume is likely composed of water. It is the best evidence yet for water worlds, a type of planet that was theorized by astronomers to exist for a long time."



Video Credit: NASA Goddard



Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and Leah Hustak (STScI)



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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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Two distant planets may be "water worlds"

[sendtonews key="QIoVYJqRBi-2434608-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

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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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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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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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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.

Tiger sharks are shifting poleward as temperatures rise

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