This,Is,A,3d,Illustration,Of,Cosmic,Microwave,Background,,Electromagnetic

Dark energy has long been seen as the invisible force behind our Universe’s accelerating expansion. This mysterious component was thought to make up nearly 70 percent of the cosmic energy budget. A new study, however, raises a different idea: maybe the Universe is expanding in a “lumpy” manner, which means dark energy might not be needed to explain those puzzling measurements of distant supernovae.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-dark-energy-and-expansion">Dark energy and expansion</h2>



For almost a century, scientists have assumed that the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/new-evidence-suggests-that-dark-energy-comes-from-black-holes/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cosmos</a> spreads out uniformly in every direction, with dark energy speeding up that expansion. The notion was adopted after researchers saw exploding stars, known as supernovae, appearing farther away than expected. 



When calculations showed that galaxies seemed to be drifting apart too quickly, dark energy became an easy placeholder for the unknown physics.



Professor <a href="https://profiles.canterbury.ac.nz/David-Wiltshire" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">David Wiltshire</a> from the <a href="https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">University of Canterbury</a> in Christchurch, New Zealand has been examining this challenge in more detail. 



His research team’s <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/537/1/L55/7926647" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">analysis</a> of supernova light curves suggests the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/mapping-the-universe-may-reveal-secrets-of-dark-energy/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Universe</a> may be more uneven than we assumed.



Their approach leads to a fresh explanation for the changes in light we see, one that focuses on how time passes differently in various gravitational conditions rather than appealing to an unseen substance.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-many-have-relied-on-dark-energy">Why many have relied on dark energy</h2>



Dark energy has been tied to the so-called Lambda Cold Dark Matter model, or <a href="https://lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov/education/graphic_history/univ_evol.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ΛCDM model</a>. 



This model has served as the bedrock of modern cosmology for decades. Scientists had no direct means to detect or measure dark energy, so they relied on the <a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aca5fa" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">apparent acceleration</a> seen in distant supernovae. They also looked to patterns in the <a href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Cosmic_Microwave_Background_CMB_radiation" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Cosmic Microwave Background</a>, which is often described as the faint afterglow of the Big Bang. 



Over the years, more data have hinted that there could be tension between early and recent <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/dark-energy-could-explain-the-rapid-expansion-of-the-early-universe/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">expansion</a> rates, sparking serious questions about whether we are missing some major puzzle piece.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-enter-the-timescape-model">Enter the timescape model</h2>



The new work supports something called the timescape model, which does not need dark energy to explain cosmic acceleration. Instead, it notes that local physics can vary depending on how mass is distributed. One clock drifting through a sparse region of the cosmos might tick faster than the same clock inside a galaxy packed with more gravitational pull. 



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><a href="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/dark-energy_doesnt-exist_history-of-universe-graphic_credit-NASA_1m.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><img src="https://www.earth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/dark-energy_doesnt-exist_history-of-universe-graphic_credit-NASA_1s.webp" alt="This graphic offers a glimpse of the history of the universe, as we currently understand it. The cosmos began expanding with the Big Bang but then around 10 billion years later it strangely began to accelerate thanks to a theoretical phenomenon termed dark energy. Credit: NASA" class="wp-image-1954661"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">This graphic offers a glimpse of the history of the universe, as we currently understand it. The cosmos began expanding with the Big Bang but then around 10 billion years later it strangely began to accelerate thanks to a theoretical phenomenon termed dark energy. Credit: NASA</figcaption></figure>



The team’s findings were featured in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters.



“Our findings show that we do not need dark energy to explain why the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/study-dark-matter-does-not-exist-and-the-universe-is-27-billion-years-old/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Universe</a> appears to expand at an accelerating rate,” noted Professor David Wiltshire, who led the study. 



He sees this approach as an opportunity to rethink the way we average cosmic expansion. “The Universe’s biggest mystery could be settled by the end of the decade,” Professor Wiltshire claimed.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-hubble-tension-and-the-lumpy-universe">Hubble tension and the lumpy Universe</h2>



Part of the growing dispute involves something called the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/unknown-factors-are-accelerating-the-expansion-of-the-universe/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hubble tension</a>.



<a href="https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2020/09/aa33910-18/aa33910-18.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Measurements</a> of the early cosmos from the Cosmic Microwave Background suggest a certain rate of expansion, while observations of supernovae in the present day reveal a faster pace. This inconsistency has triggered re-examinations of old assumptions. Adding to that, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (<a href="https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/aca5fa" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DESI</a>) has discovered that the standard ΛCDM model may not line up perfectly with some of its new high-precision data. Researchers are looking into models where dark energy <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/dark-energy-is-ripping-the-universe-apart-but-we-arent-sure-how/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">might change over time</a>, but the timescape idea takes a different path: it challenges the uniformity assumption at its core.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-rethinking-dark-energy">Rethinking dark energy </h2>



If the Universe is lumpy, with matter clumping in some regions and emptier voids in others, then local gravitational effects might skew the calculations that gave dark energy its place in cosmic theory. <a href="https://www.astro.uvic.ca/~jwillis/teaching/astr405/astr405_lecture6.pdf?utm_blank" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Traditional equations</a> used to describe expansion were first introduced almost a hundred years ago, so some researchers argue that the Universe’s complex structures were overlooked. This new study insists that a <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/universe-expansion-rate-dark-energy-measured-11-billion-years-ago/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">uniform expansion</a> might not be the full story. When you allow for different gravitational influences, dark energy becomes optional.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-looking-ahead-to-fresh-data">Looking ahead to fresh data</h2>



Several upcoming projects are on the horizon. 



The European Space Agency’s <a href="https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Euclid" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Euclid</a> satellite launched in July 2023, and future missions like the <a href="https://science.nasa.gov/mission/roman-space-telescope/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope</a> promise more comprehensive observations of supernovae. The timescape team believes that at least 1,000 high-quality supernova measurements could be enough to show if their approach really works. 



If timescape ideas pass these tests, the so-called “biggest mystery” might get resolved sooner than people think.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-does-all-of-this-mean">What does all of this mean?</h2>



To sum it all up, the Universe is more intricate than any simple map might reveal. If the <a href="https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011MNRAS.413..367S/abstract" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">timescape model</a> holds up under further scrutiny, there could be wide-ranging effects on cosmic models, especially those that rely on dark energy as a key ingredient. Astronomers, physicists, and cosmologists will be watching closely as more data come in from cutting-edge surveys and instruments. 



These results might bring clarity to the <a href="https://www.earth.com/news/dark-energy-could-explain-the-rapid-expansion-of-the-early-universe/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hubble tension</a> or uncover new clues about the structure and history of everything around us.



Dark energy has been the leading explanation for cosmic acceleration for decades. Yet, if local gravitational differences and variable clock speeds can account for what we see, the door may be open to a more nuanced story of cosmic growth. There is no shortage of skepticism within the scientific community, but unexpected solutions to old puzzles are often how we expand our understanding of the Universe. 



If the timescape approach stands the test of fresh observations, future textbooks might look a little different.



The full study is published in the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/537/1/L55/7926647" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters</a>.



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Timescape: Dark energy doesn't exist, resulting in 'lumpy' universe expansion

Dark energy has long been seen as the invisible force behind our Universe’s accelerating expansion. This mysterious component was thought to make up nearly 70 percent of the cosmic energy budget.A new study, however, raises a different idea: maybe the Universe is expanding in a “lumpy” manner, which means dark energy might not be needed to explain those puzzling measurements of distant supernovae. Dark energy and expansion For almost a century, scientists have assumed that the cosmos spreads out uniformly in every direction, with dark energy speeding...

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Mercury exposure is common in Northern Canada. Mercury exposure is common in communities in Canada's north, especially in indigenous peoples who consume fish and other wild food with high mercury content, yet current clinical guidelines are not adequate for this population. A review in CMAJ <a href="http://www.cmaj.ca/lookup/doi/10.1503/cmaj.151138" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Canadian Medical Association Journal</a> provides guidance for health care providers on the effects of mercury exposure and how to manage it in patients who consume diets high in<a href="http://www.earth.com/video/chemists-are-creating-ocean-friendly-fishing-nets/"> fish</a> and marine animals.

"Communities that frequently consume predatory fish and/or marine mammals have elevated mercury exposure," states Dr. Catherine Pirkle, Office of Public Health Studies, University of Hawaii, Manoa, <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=honolulu&amp;form=EDGEAR&amp;qs=PF&amp;cvid=6b1fc723263445c59b0badb15d749e9f&amp;cc=US&amp;setlang=en-US&amp;elv=AY3%21uAY7tbNNZGZ2yiGNjfNcI5dP9v9G08gsHOyyYrAtwEMIfrpaBk2M44TSW1qgzjf6K2eW51P6HlAtBtJspf87ytSJni67amRAqgDFA%21MM&amp;plvar=0&amp;PC=HCTS">Honolulu</a>, United States. "It is important for clinicians to be clear on the potential risks, the complexity of the underlying epidemiological data, and how to approach, in a culturally sensitive manner, communities where mercury exposure may be a concern."Mercury exposure is common in Northern Canada

People are usually exposed to mercury through diets of fish and other marine animals. Because the diets of some indigenous people in northern Canada are high in fish and marine mammals, these people are at greater risk of the negative health effects of mercury.

Mercury exposure in pregnant women can have multiple effects in children, affecting brain development. In adults, mercury poisoning can cause vision changes, numbness in extremities, muscle weakness, cognitive changes and even death. Symptoms of mercury poisoning are often difficult to detect and vary between people, requiring diagnosis by a toxicologist or neurologist.

The Nunavik Child Development Study, conducted by Laval University professor Gina Muckle, which for nearly 20 years has been following a cohort of children recruited before birth, found blood mercury concentrations above the Canadian guidance value in 16.9% of school-aged children. In another study of Inuit women aged 18-39 in northern Quebec, 53.3% had blood levels above the guidance value; the average in Canadians is 2.2% (Canadian Health Measures Survey).

Mercury levels vary widely in wild foods and are influenced by location, according to Melanie Lemire, professor with the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at Université Laval in Quebec. To help health care providers recommend appropriate consumption levels, the authors have included tables with consumption guidelines and blood mercury levels and information on how to test.

The authors caution that there should be a balance between appropriate consumption and overconsumption of wild foods with mercury; if physicians recommend complete avoidance, people may not have enough nutritious food to eat.

"Mercury exposure is one of many health concerns facing northern Canadian communities," write the authors. "Counselling to reduce exposure must recognize and address wider food security issues and nutritional challenges, or it will unlikely be effective."


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Mercury exposure is common in Northern Canada

Mercury exposure is common in Northern Canada. Mercury exposure is...

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The rising price -- in both money and health -- of extreme weather events amid rapid urbanisation, and the corresponding value of applying science and technology to reduce the risks, is underscored in six new research papers formally launched at a UN event today.

Assembled by UN University's Malaysia-based International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH), the papers are published in a special issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health.

And they help inform a special Forum on Advancing Science and Technology in the Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, hosted in Kuala Lumpur July 19 by UNU-IIGH and the UN Development Programme.

The papers include a warning about large productivity losses due to heat stress, estimating that in South-East Asia alone "as much as 15% to 20% of annual work hours may already be lost in heat-exposed jobs," a figure that may double by 2050 as the planet continues warming.

According to author Tord Kjellstrom of the Health and Environment International Trust, New Zealand: "Current climate conditions in tropical and subtropical parts of the world are already so hot during the hot seasons that occupational health effects occur and work capacity for many people is affected."

Dr. Kjellstrom's paper cites estimated GDP losses due to heat stress for 43 countries: Australia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Costa Rica, Denmark, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Fiji, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Mexico, Myanmar, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Qatar, Russia, Saint Lucia, Samoa, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Tanzania, Thailand, Tuvalu, United Kingdom, United States, Vanuatu and Vietnam (see tables at <a href="http://bit.ly/29BL0Dn" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://bit.ly/29BL0Dn</a>).

The situation in Malaysia is typical of the South-East Asian countries: As work slows or stops to avoid dangerous heat stress, the country's Gross Domestic Product will decline by an estimated 5.9% (value: US $95 billion) by 2030, more than double the estimated 2.8% GDP lost to heat stress in 2010.

According to latest estimates, the global economic cost of reduced productivity may be more than US $2 trillion by 2030. The most susceptible jobs include the lowest paid -- heavy labour and low-skill agricultural and manufacturing.

In 2030, in both India and China, the GDP losses could total $450 billion, although mitigation may be made possible by a major shift in working hours, among other measures employers will need to take to reduce losses.

This problem is already placing major strain on, for example, electricity infrastructure, Dr. Kiellstrom notes. The additional energy needed for a single city the size of Bangkok for each 1°C increase of average ambient temperature can be as much as 2000 MW, roughly the output of a major power plant.

"It is very important to develop and apply adaptation measures now to protect people from the disasters that current climate and slowing changing climate brings," says Dr. Kjellstrom. "However, adaptation is only half an answer -- we must also take decisive action now to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases. Failure will cause the frequency and intensity of disasters to worsen dramatically beyond 2050, and the situation at the end of this century will be especially alarming for the world's poorest people."

Heat stress is one of several direct and growing impacts on human health due to a warming planet, understanding all of which "is critical in planning for mitigation and adaptation plans," the authors say.

According to the papers:
<ul>
 	<li>Disastrously heavy rains can expand insect breeding sites, drive rodents from their burrows, and contaminate freshwater resources, leading to the spread of disease and compromising safe drinking water supplies.</li>
 	<li>Warmer temperatures often promote the spread of mosquito-borne parasitic and viral diseases by shifting the vectors' geographic range and shortening the pathogen incubation period.</li>
 	<li>Climate change can worsen air quality by triggering fires and dust storms and promoting certain chemical reactions causing respiratory illness and other health problems.</li>
 	<li>In extreme disasters, harm is often amplified by the destruction of medical facilities and disruption of health services</li>
 	<li>Central and south China can anticipate the greatest number of casualties and highest economic losses from extreme weather events in the Asia Pacific region -- the world's most disaster-prone region -- and a more integrated, multidisciplinary approach is needed to upgrade the nation's emergency response system for natural disasters.</li>
 	<li>From 1980 to 2012, roughly 2.1 million people worldwide died as a direct result of nearly 21,000 natural catastrophes such as floods, mudslides, extreme heat, drought, high winds or fires. The cost of those disasters exceeded $4 trillion (US) -- a loss comparable to the current annual GDP of Germany.</li>
 	<li>In Asia Pacific 1.2 billion people have been affected by 1,215 disasters since the millennium. Some 92% of human exposure to floods occurs in Asia Pacific, along with 91% of exposure to cyclones and two-thirds of all exposure to landslides. Between 1970 and 2011, two million people in the region -- 75% of the world total -- were killed by disasters.</li>
 	<li>From 1993 to 2012, the Philippines experienced the highest number of extreme weather events (311), Thailand experienced the greatest financial loss (US$ 5.4 billion) and Myanmar experienced the highest death rate (13.5 deaths per 100,000 people).</li>
 	<li>In just 40 years, from 1970 to 2010, the regional population exposed to flooding risk more than doubled from about 30 million to 64 million while those in cyclone-prone areas rose from roughly 72 to 121 million.</li>
 	<li>Cities cover 2% of world land cover, generate 60 to 80% of greenhouse gas emissions and half of all waste, and are expanding at a rate of 1 million people per week. In a single generation -- from 2000 to 2030 --urban land extents are expected to have tripled.</li>
</ul>
The authors underline that fast-rising numbers of people are being exposed to the impacts of climate change, with much of the increase occurring in cities in flood-prone coastal areas or on hills susceptible to mudslides or landslides. Especially vulnerable are people living in poverty, including about one billion in slums.

Cities -- concentrated sources of energy consumption, heat and pollution, covered in surfaces that absorb warmth -- create local heat islands and impair air quality, both threats to health.

And rising demand for cooling contributes to warming the world. Air conditioners not only pump heat out directly, the electricity required is typically produced by burning fossil fuels, adding to atmospheric greenhouse gases. As well, people acclimatized to air conditioning become less heat tolerant, further increasing demand for cooling.

On the other hand, better urban planning presents "tremendous opportunity" to mitigate the health impacts of more extreme weather events.

Urban planners, the authors say, can help by designing cities "in ways that enhance health, sustainability, and resilience all at once," incorporating better building design, facilitating a shift to renewable energy, and fostering the protection and expansion of tree cover, wetlands and other carbon sinks, for example.

To mitigate the health impacts of longer, more severe extreme weather events, the authors stress the need to replace piecemeal reactive responses with integrated, multi-disciplinary planning approaches.

Beyond better preparation and warning systems to improve disaster response, recommended steps include enhancing drainage to reduce flood risks and strengthening health care, especially in poor areas.

In an introduction to the <a href="http://bit.ly/29Be3Wn" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">six paper collection</a>, UNU-IIGH Research Fellows Jamal Hisham Hashim and José Siri write that humanity faces "substantial health risks from the degradation of the natural life support systems which are critical for human survival. It has become increasingly apparent that actions to mitigate environmental change have powerful co-benefits for health."

<hr />

Comments:

"It is not clear yet whether considerations of health and sustainability will overrule the press of economic progress in coming decades, and ethical considerations surrounding the right to development are thorny indeed. What is clear is that tremendous opportunities exist to design cities in ways that enhance health, sustainability, and resilience all at once. Decisions made today will have a profound impact on health around the world for many decades to come. We hope these papers help improve understanding of the complex relationship between global environmental change and health, of the threat climate change poses to hard-won advances in human health worldwide, and of policy options available to mitigate these risks."

Anthony Capon, Director, UNU-IIGH

"The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) underlines the increasing importance of science-based decision-making. Public health and disaster risk reduction needs the concerted approach of scientists, policy makers, civil society, the private sector, media and other stakeholders. It is now time to develop "Words into Action" for implementation of the SFDRR."

Michelle Gyles-McDonnough, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei Darussalam

"Disasters have killed more than 1.3 million people and cost over US$2 trillion during the last two decades. The only way to protect development gains from disasters and to eradicate poverty is to integrate disaster risk reduction into development and to make all development risk-informed. UNDP will continue to provide support for getting DRR on the political agenda as a cross-cutting development priority, and facilitating the translation of DRR policy frameworks into action at the local level for empowered lives and resilient nations."

Rajib Shaw, Executive Director, Integrated Research on Disaster Risk Programme, China

"This excellent series of peer review papers help to focus attention on the impact of disasters and their health consequences, particularly in South East Asia. The papers summarise the need for emphasis on public health impact measurements as well as stressing the importance of enhanced scientific and technical work on disaster risk reduction. This very welcome series demonstrates that only by documenting the effects of disasters can evidence be provided to support the availability and application of science and technology to inform decision-making during difficult times."

Virginia Murray, Global Disaster Risk Reduction Expert, Public Health England, and vice-chair, Scientific and Technical Advisory Group, United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR)

"People know intuitively that "react and cure" is a far more expensive strategy than "anticipate and prevent." The experts behind these insightful papers, by detailing the high price of inaction in terms of both our finances and our health, greatly strengthen the case for taking defensive steps against disaster risks -- and the sooner the better."

Zakri Abdul Hamid, Science Advisor to the Prime Minister, Malaysia
###
The six papers, published by the Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health
<ul>
 	<li><a href="http://bit.ly/29AXLlM" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Climate Change, Extreme Weather Events, and Human Health Implications in the Asia Pacific Region, by Jamal Hisham Hashim and Zailina Hashim</a></li>
 	<li><a href="http://bit.ly/29N9IBA" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Urbanization, Extreme Events, and Health: The Case for Systems Approaches in Mitigation, Management, and Response, by José G. Siri, Barry Newell, Katrina Proust, and Anthony Capon</a></li>
 	<li><a href="http://bit.ly/29BL0Dn" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Impact of Climate Conditions on Occupational Health and Related Economic Losses: A New Feature of Global and Urban Health in the Context of Climate Change, by Tord Kjellstrom</a></li>
 	<li><a href="http://bit.ly/29EX6y4" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Impact of Climate Change on Air Quality and Public Health in Urban Areas, by Noor Artika Hassan, Zailina Hashim, and Jamal Hisham Hashim</a></li>
 	<li><a href="http://bit.ly/29EWWXw" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Review of Climate Change and Water-Related Diseases in Cambodia and Findings From Stakeholder Knowledge Assessments, by Lachlan J. McIver, Vibol S. Chan, Kathyrn J. Bowen, Steven N. Iddings, Kol Hero and Piseth P. Raingsey</a></li>
 	<li><a href="http://bit.ly/29UhBI7" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Emergency Response to and Preparedness for Extreme Weather Events and Environmental Changes in China, by Li Wang, Yongfeng Liao, Linsheng Yang, Hairong Li, Bixiong Ye, and Wuyi Wang</a></li>
</ul>

<hr />

Background

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 was agreed at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan in March 2015 and endorsed by the UN General Assembly in June 2015.

The goal of the Sendai Framework is to prevent new and reduce existing disaster risk through the implementation of integrated and inclusive economic, structural, legal, social, health, cultural, educational, environmental, technological, political and institutional measures that prevent and reduce hazard exposure and vulnerability to disaster, increase preparedness for response and recovery, and thus strengthen resilience.

The outcome expected by 2030 is a substantial reduction in disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods and health in the economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental aspects of persons, private sector, communities and countries.

A key feature of the Sendai Framework is the shift of focus from managing 'disasters' to managing 'risks'. Such a shift requires a better understanding of risk in all its dimensions of hazards, exposure and vulnerability.

The role of science and technology in providing the evidence and knowledge on risk features heavily in the Sendai Framework.

The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) Science and Technology Conference, held 27-29 January 2016 in Geneva, produced the Science and Technology Roadmap to Support the Implementation of the Sendai Framework.

<hr />

The UNU and UNDP Joint Public Forum and High Level Roundtable on Advancing Science and Technology in the Implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 has the following goals:
<ul>
 	<li>Raise awareness of the value of science, technology and innovation (STI) for disaster risk reduction</li>
 	<li>Engage key stakeholders in options to build STI capacity in this field, and</li>
 	<li>Identify strategic next steps.</li>
</ul>
It takes place in Kuala Lumpur Tuesday, 19 July, 9 a.m. to noon (full details: <a href="http://bit.ly/29BK7dW" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://bit.ly/29BK7dW</a>).

<hr />

About <a href="http://www.unu.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">UN University</a>

Established in 1973, United Nations University (UNU) is a global think tank and postgraduate teaching organization headquartered in Japan. The mission of the UN University is to contribute, through collaborative research and education, to efforts to resolve the pressing global problems of human development, welfare and survival that are the concern of the United Nations, its Peoples and Member States.

In carrying out this mission, UN University works with leading universities and research institutes in UN Member States, functioning as a bridge between the international academic community and the United Nations system. Through postgraduate teaching activities, UNU contributes to capacity building, particularly in developing countries.

About <a href="http://iigh.unu.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">UNU-IIGH</a>

The UNU International Institute for Global Health was founded in 2007 with a US$ 40 million endowment from the Malaysian Government. Based in Kuala Lumpur, the mission of UNU-IIGH is to build knowledge and capacity for decision-making by the UN system about global health issues.

As part of the International Council for Science (ICSU), UNU-IIGH is a co-sponsor of a 10-year global interdisciplinary science program on Health and Wellbeing in the Changing Urban Environment - A Systems Analysis Approaches.

UNU-IIGH contributions include capacity building in systems methods for population health research; development and evaluation of metrics for healthy urban development, particularly those relevant to low and middle income countries; and leadership training for city planners, elected officials, public health workers and others.

About <a href="http://www.undp.org/">UNDP</a>

UNDP partners with people at all levels of society to help build nations that can withstand crisis, and drive and sustain the kind of growth that improves the quality of life for everyone. On the ground in more than 170 countries and territories, we offer global perspective and local insight to help empower lives and build resilient nations.

The rising price of extreme weather events

The rising price -- in both money and health --...

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Operation IceBridge targets pools of melt water on Arctic ice. This summer, with sea ice across the Arctic Ocean shrinking to below-average levels, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA">NASA</a> airborne survey of polar ice just completed its first flights. Its target: aquamarine pools of melt water on the ice surface that may be accelerating the overall sea ice retreat.

NASA's Operation IceBridge completed the first research flight of its new 2016 Arctic summer campaign on July 13. The <a href="http://www.earth.com/video/the-science-behind-big-80s-hair/">science</a> flights, which continue through July 25, are collecting data on sea ice in a year following a record-warm winter in the Arctic. Operation IceBridge targets pools of melt water on Arctic ice

The summer flights will map the extent, frequency and depth of melt ponds, the pools of melt water that form on sea ice during spring and summer. Recent studies have found that the formation of melt ponds early in the summer is a good predictor of the sea ice yearly minimum extent in September: if there are more ponds on the ice earlier in the melt season, they reduce the ability of sea ice to reflect solar radiation, which leads to more melt.

"Although there have been previous airborne campaigns in the Arctic, no one has ever mapped the large-scale depth of melt ponds on sea ice using remote sensing data," said Nathan Kurtz, IceBridge's project scientist and a sea ice researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "The information we'll collect is going to show how much water is retained in melt ponds and what kind of topography is needed on the sea ice to constrain them, which will help improve melt pond models."

This short flight campaign is operating from Barrow, Alaska. The flights are low at an altitude of 1500 feet (450 meters) aboard an HU-25C Guardian Falcon aircraft from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The plane carries three instruments that measure changes in the ice elevation and surface temperatures and create color maps of sea ice.

Operation IceBridge provides connectivity between the measurements of polar ice between two NASA satellite campaigns: the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, which operated from 2003 to 2009, and its successor, ICESat-2, scheduled to launch by 2018. The Barrow campaign will give a glimpse into what ICESat-2 will be able to observe in the Arctic in the summertime, since the laser altimeter IceBridge carries is similar to the one that will be aboard ICESat-2.

Kurtz expects that flying in the summer will allow his team to find areas of sea ice not covered by snow, which will let them take direct measurements of the freeboard, the fraction of sea ice that floats above the waterline. This measurement would improve studies of sea ice thickness in the Arctic.

Flights will be shorter than the usual IceBridge Arctic flights, due to the Falcon's smaller fuel capacity compared to the P-3 aircraft that IceBridge normally uses in the Arctic. In total, IceBridge scientists are expecting to carry out five 4-hour-long flights, each one covering 1000 nautical miles (1150 miles) and focusing on the Beaufort and Chukchi seas north of Russia, Alaska and Canada..

"The advantage of being based in Barrow is that we'll be starting the flights right from the water's edge," Kurtz said.

For its annual Arctic and Antarctic campaigns, IceBridge flights follow pre-established lines selected by the scientific community. But in Barrow, due to weather uncertainty, the mission will pursue targets of opportunity.

"The day before the flight we'll be looking at weather imagery and models, and I'll try to plan a flight line that basically gets into any hole in the clouds there is, rather than following a specific path," Kurtz said.

NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia provided the laser altimeter and the infrared camera that are being used during this summer campaign. IceBridge's Digital Mapping System came from NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California.
###
For more about Operation IceBridge and to follow the summer Arctic campaign, visit: <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/icebridge" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.nasa.gov/icebridge</a>

</div>

Operation IceBridge targets pools of melt water on Arctic ice

Operation IceBridge targets pools of melt water on Arctic ice....

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TwoTwo key climate change indicators continue to break records. key climate change indicators -- global surface temperatures and<a href="http://www.earth.com/news/antarctic-ice-loss-sea-level/"> Arctic</a> sea ice extent -- have broken numerous records through the first half of 2016, according to NASA analyses of ground-based observations and satellite data.

Each of the first six months of 2016 set a record as the warmest respective month globally in the modern temperature record, which dates to 1880, according to scientists at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA">NASA's</a> Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The six-month period from January to June was also the planet's warmest half-year on record, with an average temperature 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the late nineteenth century.

Five of the first six months of 2016 also set records for the smallest respective monthly Arctic sea ice extent since consistent satellite records began in 1979, according to analyses developed by scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland. The one exception, March, recorded the second smallest extent for that month.

While these two key climate indicators have broken records in 2016, NASA scientists said it is more significant that global temperature and Arctic sea ice are continuing their decades-long trends of change. Both trends are ultimately driven by rising concentrations of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The extent of Arctic sea ice at the peak of the summer melt season now typically covers 40 percent less area than it did in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Arctic sea ice extent in September, the seasonal low point in the annual cycle, has been declining at a rate of 13.4 percent per decade.

"While the El Niño event in the tropical Pacific this winter gave a boost to global temperatures from October onwards, it is the underlying trend which is producing these record numbers," GISS Director Gavin Schmidt said.

Previous El Niño events have driven temperatures to what were then record levels, such as in 1998. But in 2016, even as the effects of the recent El Niño taper off, global temperatures have risen well beyond those of 18 years ago because of the overall warming that has taken place in that time.

The global trend in rising temperatures is outpaced by the regional warming in the Arctic, said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA Goddard.

"It has been a record year so far for global temperatures, but the record high temperatures in the Arctic over the past six months have been even more extreme," Meier said. "This warmth as well as unusual weather patterns have led to the record low sea ice extents so far this year."

NASA tracks temperature and sea ice as part of its effort to understand the Earth as a system and to understand how Earth is changing. In addition to maintaining 19 Earth-observing space missions, NASA also sends researchers around the globe to investigate different facets of the planet at closer range. Right now, NASA researchers are working across the Arctic to better understand both the processes driving increased sea ice melt and the impacts of rising temperatures on Arctic ecosystems.

NASA's long-running Operation IceBridge campaign last week began a series of airborne measurements of melt ponds on the surface of the Arctic sea ice cap. Melt ponds are shallow pools of water that form as ice melts. Their darker surface can absorb more sunlight and accelerate the melting process. IceBridge is flying out of Barrow, Alaska, during sea ice melt season to capture melt pond observations at a scale never before achieved. Recent studies have found that the formation of melt ponds early in the summer is a good predictor of the yearly minimum sea ice extent in September.

"No one has ever, from a remote sensing standpoint, mapped the large-scale depth of melt ponds on sea ice," said Nathan Kurtz, IceBridge's project scientist and a sea ice researcher at NASA Goddard. "The information we'll collect is going to show how much water is retained in melt ponds and what kind of topography is needed on the sea ice to constrain them, which will help improve melt pond models."

Operation IceBridge is a NASA airborne mission that has been flying multiple campaigns at both poles each year since 2009, with a goal of maintaining critical continuity of observations of sea ice and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.

At the same time, NASA researchers began in earnest this year a nearly decade-long, multi-faceted field study of Arctic ecosystems in Alaska and Canada. The Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) will study how forests, permafrost and other ecosystems are responding to rising temperatures in the Arctic, where climate change is unfolding faster than anywhere else on the planet.

ABoVE consists of dozens individual experiments that over years will study the region's changing forests, the cycle of carbon movement between the atmosphere and land, thawing permafrost, the relationship between fire and climate change, and more.
###
For more information on NASA's Earth science activities, visit:
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/earth" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.nasa.gov/earth</a>

For more information about NASA's IceBridge, visit:
<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/icebridge" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.nasa.gov/icebridge</a>

For more information about the ABoVE mission, visit:
<a href="http://above.nasa.gov/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://above.nasa.gov/</a>

</div>

Two key climate change indicators continue to break records

TwoTwo key climate change indicators continue to break records. key...

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Study: Banning fishing in parts of the ocean isn't enough to save biodiversity. A University of Washington fisheries professor argues this week that saving biodiversity in the world's oceans requires more than banning fishing with marine protected areas, or oceanic wilderness areas. In a three-page editorial published this week in the journal <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/wisdom-changes-end-life/">Nature</a>, he argues that this increasingly popular conservation strategy is not as effective as properly managing recreational and commercial fisheries. "There's this idea that the only way you can protect the ocean is by permanently closing parts of the ocean to fishing, with no-take areas," said Ray Hilborn, a professor in the UW's School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. "You protect biodiversity better by regulating fisheries over the country's entire economic zone."

Marine protected areas have grown in popularity since the early 2000s. Recent examples include an area twice the size of Texas in the central Pacific established in 2014 by President Barack Obama, and a proposal to close 25 percent of the Seychelles' exclusive economic zone, an island nation off Africa's east coast. Study: Banning fishing in parts of the ocean isn't enough to save biodiversity

Several environmental organizations have set a longer-term goal of making 30 percent of the world's oceans into no-take marine protected areas by the year 2030. But Hilborn believes this is not the best way to protect global marine ecosystems.

"If the problem is overfishing or bycatch, then fisheries management is much more effective than establishing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA">MPAs</a> because you regulate the catch over the entire economic zone," Hilborn said. "I don't see how anyone can defend MPAs as a better method than fisheries management, except in places where you just can't do management."

In countries with functioning fisheries management systems, Hilborn believes, conservationists and the fishing industry should work together on large-scale protection of marine biodiversity and sensitive marine habitats. Study: Banning fishing in parts of the ocean isn't enough to save biodiversity

For example, changes in fishing practices that allowed "dolphin-safe tuna" have cut dolphin deaths in the eastern Pacific by almost 100 times between 1986 and 1998, the article notes.

"You could never have reduced dolphin deaths that much by simply closing part of the ocean to fishing," Hilborn said.

He argues that working with the fishing industry to modify what types of gear are used and when and where different species are allowed to be caught can make more of a difference than establishing new marine protected areas.

"In Alaska, for example, more than 50 percent of the continental shelf waters are closed to specific kinds of fishing gear and the entire shelf is covered by species-specific catch restrictions," he writes. "This is much more protection than could be offered by turning 30 percent of the region into MPAs."

Hilborn said he worries that marine protected areas are being created without specific objectives, lacking input from affected communities, and without analysis of the larger-scale effects. Closing one area to fishing will just shift the pressure to a different area, Hilborn said, or cause people to seek other, more environmentally harmful sources of food.

In early September, world leaders will meet in Hawaii for the high-profile World Conservation Congress, held every four years by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Hilborn hopes his article will prompt discussion about priorities for preserving the health of marine environments.

"The modern conservation movement is places too much emphasis on protected areas," Hilborn said. "The focus needs to shift. We can better protect biodiversity, and still provide food, by looking to fisheries management as the first defense."
###
For more information, contact Hilborn at <a href="mailto:rayh@uw.edu">rayh@uw.edu</a> or 206-543-3587.

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Study: Banning fishing in parts of the ocean isn't enough to save biodiversity

Study: Banning fishing in parts of the ocean isn't enough...

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Scientists: Tropical cyclones will become stronger as temperatures warm. Powerful tropical cyclones like the super typhoon that lashed Taiwan with 150-mile-per-hour winds last week and then flooded parts of China are expected to become even stronger as the planet warms. That trend hasn't become evident yet, but it will, scientists say.

So far, the warming effects of greenhouse gases on tropical cyclones have been masked, in part by air pollution.

Over the past century, tiny airborne particles called aerosols, which cool the climate by absorbing and reflecting sunlight, largely cancelled out the effects of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions when it came to tropical storm intensity, according to a new scientific review paper published this week in the journal Science. That might sound like a good thing, but many of those particles came from the burning of fossil fuels and wood, and contributed to acid rain, smog and lung damage. As vehicles and power plants added filters and scrubbers to reduce their impact on human health, levels of man-made aerosols in the atmosphere began to decline. At the same time, greenhouse gas concentrations continued to rise.

That compensating effect won't continue if greenhouse gas warming keeps increasing, the scientists write. Using model simulations, they provide new calculations of the cancelling effects of aerosols and greenhouse gases on tropical cyclones worldwide. They also take a closer look at the still-developing understanding of how climate change will affect tropical cyclones, also known regionally as typhoons or hurricanes.

"The fact that global warming's fingerprints don't yet jump out at us when we look at hurricanes isn't surprising - it's what current science tells us we should expect," said lead author Adam Sobel, a professor at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and School of Engineering. "The same science tells us that those fingerprints will show up eventually in more ultra-powerful storms."

Increasing potential intensity

The scientists examined a wide range of published analyses of tropical cyclone data and computer modeling, looking specifically at potential intensity, which predicts the maximum intensity that tropical cyclones could reach in a given environment. Their new global calculations of the cancelling effect follow a 2015 study led by Lamont's Mingfang Ting, with Suzana Camargo, also a coauthor on the new paper, that showed similar effects over the North Atlantic, where hurricanes that make landfall in the United States form.

Many factors contribute to a tropical cyclone's intensity. At the most basic, the storm's convective strength - the boiling motion of air rising from the ocean surface to the atmosphere - depends on the temperature difference between the surface ocean and the upper atmosphere. Computer models that simulate the physics of tropical cyclones suggest that this difference should increase as the climate and sea surface temperatures warm, and that tropical storm strength should increase with it.

Less well understood is how climate change should influence the number of tropical cyclones that form each year. Computer models indicate that while the total number of cyclones should decline in a warming climate, more intense, highly destructive storms like Super Typhoon Nepartak are likely to become more common.

We have seen harbingers of that change in recent years: <a href="http://www.earth.com/image/typhoon-lingling-moves-through-the-yellow-sea/">Typhoon</a> Haiyan, also known as Yolanda, killed more than 6,300 people as it devastated parts of the Philippines as a Category 5 storm in 2013. Last year, Hurricane Patricia became the second most-intense tropical cyclone on record when its sustained winds reached 215 mph before weakening to hit Mexico with winds still powerful at 150 mph.

The scientists' review finds that the largest increases in tropical cyclone potential intensity are expected to be at the margins of the tropics, particularly in the Atlantic and Pacific. The amount of rain that tropical storms bring is also expected to increase as the planet warms, due to increasing water vapor; and coastal flooding from storm surges that accompany tropical storms are expected to become more of a problem as sea levels rise. The scientists also describe a shift in tropical cyclone tracks toward the margins of the tropics, noting that it is unclear if the shift is a response to warming. Simulations for the western North Pacific suggest that it is, at least in part.

Detecting the influence of climate change

Two factors make it difficult to detect greenhouse gas-related trends in tropical cyclone intensity, as the authors explain.

One is the influence of aerosols. Model calculations indicate that aerosols have about twice the effect of greenhouse gases on a tropical cyclone's potential intensity. So while greenhouse gas levels have been greater than aerosol levels for many decades in terms of absolute magnitude - which is why the planet has warmed by about 1.5?F since the Industrial Revolution - they have only recently surpassed the cooling effect of aerosols in terms of their influence on tropical cyclone intensity.

The other challenge is natural variability. Tropical cyclones are relatively rare - the world averages around 90 per year - and that number fluctuates from year to year and decade to decade, due in large part to natural causes. It is statistically difficult to detect long-term trends within that large natural variability, Sobel said. Satellite records that can monitor tropical storms worldwide also only go back to the 1970s.

Scientists at Lamont, including Sobel, Camargo and coauthors Allison Wing and Chia-Ying Lee, are using both observations and computer models to expand understanding of how tropical cyclone behavior has changed and the physical mechanisms by which climate affects extreme weather. Among other projects, they are developing a tropical cyclone risk model that can be used in urban planning that incorporates climate factors in determining the probability of a tropical cyclone making landfall at a given location.
###
The other coauthors of the paper are Michael Tippett of Columbia's School of Engineering, and Timothy Hall of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Funding for the research was provided by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.

The paper, "Human Influence on Tropical Cyclone Intensity," is available from the authors.

Scientist contact:

Adam Sobel <a href="mailto:ahs129@ldeo.columbia.edu">ahs129@ldeo.columbia.edu</a> (845) 365-8527

Suzana Camargo <a href="mailto:suzana@ldeo.columbia.edu">suzana@ldeo.columbia.edu</a> (845) 365-8640

More information: Kevin Krajick, Senior editor, science news, The Earth Institute <a href="mailto:kkrajick@ei.columbia.edu">kkrajick@ei.columbia.edu</a> 212-854-9729

Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory is Columbia University's home for Earth science research. Its scientists develop fundamental knowledge about the origin, evolution and future of the natural world, from the planet's deepest interior to the outer reaches of its atmosphere, on every continent and in every ocean, providing a rational basis for the difficult choices facing humanity. <a href="http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu</a> | @LamontEarth

The Earth Institute, Columbia University mobilizes the sciences, education and public policy to achieve a sustainable earth. <a href="http://www.earth.columbia.edu/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">http://www.earth.columbia.edu</a>.

Scientists: Tropical cyclones will become stronger as temperatures warm

Scientists: Tropical cyclones will become stronger as temperatures warm. Powerful...

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Atrazine has been very good at killing weeds in corn fields for more than 50 years. But some of the properties that make it a successful herbicide, such as its persistence in the soil and ability to be transported in water, also lead to concerns about potential environmental impact. At both federal and state levels, increasing restrictions on atrazine use has the sweet corn industry wondering about alternatives.

"The list of herbicides available for use on sweet corn is much more limited than field corn, so historically sweet corn growers and processors have relied heavily on atrazine. They have been in need of alternatives, but the call for those alternatives has gone largely unanswered," says University of Illinois and USDA Agricultural Research Service weed scientist Marty Williams.

Williams and a team of researchers from <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/unequal-treatment-protestors/">Oregon</a> and Minnesota polled growers and processors to find out the weed management tactics they would consider using as alternatives.

"At the onset of this project, we engaged the processing sweet corn industry. We knew alternatives to atrazine had to be pragmatic. Are weed biocontrol agents an option? Would a cover crop solve the problem? Is handweeding cost-effective? In this case, no, no, and no. They wanted us to develop systems that integrated mechanical control with existing herbicide technology," Williams recalls.

Most of the alternative herbicides they tried were already registered for use in sweet corn, and came from different herbicide classes than atrazine. The research team settled on 16 treatments, including three standard atrazine-containing treatments. Treatments were compared in sweet corn fields in Illinois, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota">Minnesota</a>, and Oregon over four years.

"Standard treatments containing atrazine and mesotrione applied postemergence provided the best control, and resulted in crop yields comparable to the weed-free check," Williams states. "In our study, alternative treatments with tembotrione applied postemergence with or without interrow cultivation were similar in weed control and crop yield to atrazine-containing treatments."

Interestingly, interrow cultivation sometimes stimulated weed emergence, thereby reducing effectiveness of the tactic in certain fields. The researchers also found that several other atrazine-free treatments worked well, but only in Oregon.

"Oregon fields were dominated by small-seeded weed species that were controlled by more products than the large-seeded weeds more common in the Midwest, such as velvetleaf and giant ragweed," Williams explains.

Tembotrione was used to represent the HPPD inhibiting class of herbicides, which includes other efficacious herbicides such as topramezone, mesotrione, and bicyclopyrone. This mode of action was developed most recently, but some weeds are already becoming resistant to HPPD inhibitors.

"As with most herbicides, misuse of the alternatives to atrazine could select for herbicide resistant weed populations. Nonetheless, it is possible to grow sweet corn without atrazine using an approach that sweet corn growers and processors consider adoptable," Williams notes.
###
The article, "Alternatives to atrazine for weed management in processing sweet corn," is published in Weed Science. The research was supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (grant no. 2012-03266).

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Farmers are finding alternatives to Atrazine

Atrazine has been very good at killing weeds in corn...

Beijing: Air quality has improved in 2016. Beijing's notoriously awful air quality improved significantly in the first half of the year, with actions taken to curb the city's heavy pollution having a positive effect, officials in the <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/ancient-people-elongated-skulls/">Chinese</a> capital said.
Concentrations of microscopic PM2.5 - small, inhalable particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs and are considered a reliable gauge of air quality - dropped by 17.9 percent in the first six months against the same period last year, the Municipal Environmental Protection Bureau said on its website late Monday. Beijing: Air quality has improved in 2016
The number of days in which air quality was rated good grew by 19, to 107, while the number of days with heavy pollution fell by two, to 14, the bureau said.
The ongoing closure of 174 heavily polluting Beijing factories was among the reasons given for the improvement, along with the switching of 463 communities from coal to alternative energy sources, the retirement of tens of thousands of exhaust-spewing cars, trucks and buses, and the addition of 6,803 vehicles running purely on electricity.
"Since the start of the year, the entire city has assiduously implemented the key tasks of the clean air action plan," the bureau said. "The improvement in air quality citywide has been obvious."
With more than 21 million people, Beijing has struggled with the ills of most modern cities, including snarled traffic and a shortage of affordable housing. Air pollution, however, has perhaps had the biggest impact on quality of life, with schools closed and outdoor activities curtailed on particularly bad days. Air pollution was also cited as a concern by evaluators ahead of Beijing being awarded the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Actions taken by the central government, especially since 2014, have borne fruit, however, with overall pollution levels in Beijing down in each of the past two years.
Coal consumption is the biggest source of air pollution in China. The country is now the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, although the United States far exceeds it on a per capita basis.
Researchers at Germany's Max Planck institute have estimated that smog has led to 1.4 million premature deaths per year in China, while the nonprofit group Berkeley Earth in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California">California</a> has had a higher figure, 1.6 million.
© 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.

Beijing: Air quality has improved in 2016

Beijing: Air quality has improved in 2016. Beijing's notoriously awful...

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Fracking worsens asthma for nearby residents. Fracking may worsen asthma in children and adults who live near sites where the oil and gas drilling method is used, according to an 8-year study in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania">Pennsylvania</a>.
The study found that asthma treatments were as much as four times more common in patients living closer to areas with more or bigger active wells than those living far away.
But the study did not establish that fracking directly caused or worsened asthma. There's also no way to tell from the study whether asthma patients exposed to fracking fare worse than those exposed to more traditional gas drilling methods or to other industrial activities.Fracking worsens asthma for nearby residents
Fracking refers to hydraulic fracturing, a technique for extracting oil and gas by injecting water, sand and chemicals into wells at high pressure to crack rock. Environmental effects include exhaust, dust and noise from heavy truck traffic transporting water and other materials, and from drilling rigs and compressors. Fracking and improved drilling methods led to a boom in production of oil and gas in several U.S. states, including Pennsylvania, North Dakota, Oklahoma, <a href="http://www.earth.com/image/tropical-storm-imelda-brings-extreme-rainfall-to-texas/">Texas</a> and Colorado.
Sara Rasmussen, the study's lead author and a researcher at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, said pollution and stress from the noise caused by fracking might explain the results. But the authors emphasized that the study doesn't prove what caused patients' symptoms.
More than 25 million U.S. adults and children have asthma, a disease that narrows airways in the lungs. Symptoms include wheezing, breathing difficulties and chest tightness, and they can sometimes flare up with exposure to dust, air pollution and stress.
Previous research has found heavy air pollution in areas where oil and gas drilling is booming.
Industry groups responding to the new research said air samplings measured by Pennsylvania authorities near natural gas operations during some of the study years found pollutant levels unlikely to cause health issues. But samplings were limited and didn't reflect potential cumulative effects of emissions from the drilling sites.
The new study was published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine.
The researchers noted that between 2005 and 2012, more than 6,200 fracking wells were drilled in Pennsylvania. They used electronic health records to identify almost 36,000 asthma patients treated during that time in the Geisinger Health System, which covers more than 40 counties in Pennsylvania. Evidence of asthma attacks included new prescriptions for steroid medicines, emergency-room treatment for asthma and asthma hospitalizations.
During the study, there were more than 20,000 new oral steroid prescriptions ordered, almost 5,000 asthma hospitalizations and almost 2,000 ER asthma visits.
Those outcomes were 50 percent to four times more common in asthma patients living closer to areas with more or bigger active wells than among those living far away.
The highest risk for asthma attacks occurred in people living a median of about 12 miles from drilled wells. The lowest risk was for people living a median of about 40 miles away.
Dr. Norman H. Edelman, senior scientific adviser for the American Lung Association, called the study "interesting and provocative." But he said it only shows an association between fracking and asthma, not a "cause and effect," and that more rigorous research is needed.
"Asthma is a huge problem," he said. "Anything we can do to elucidate the causes will be very useful."
---
Online:
JAMA Internal Medicine: <a href="http://tinyurl.com/jdj2hxd">http://tinyurl.com/jdj2hxd</a>
Fracking: <a href="https://www.epa.gov/hydraulicfracturing">https://www.epa.gov/hydraulicfracturing</a>
Asthma: <a href="http://tinyurl.com/jhpkc7f">http://tinyurl.com/jhpkc7f</a>
---
Follow AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner. Her work can be found at <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/content/lindsey-tanner">http://bigstory.ap.org/content/lindsey-tanner</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.

Fracking worsens asthma for nearby residents

Fracking worsens asthma for nearby residents. Fracking may worsen asthma...

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Climate change will leave Arctic migratory birds with nowhere to go. Climate change could make much of the Arctic unsuitable for millions of migratory birds that travel north to breed each year, according to a new international study published today in <a href="https://www.bing.com/search?q=global+change&amp;cvid=f59f6b89d16d45e299cb30ccb682b2b2&amp;FORM=ANAB01&amp;PC=HCTS">Global Change</a> Biology.

The University of Queensland School of Biological Sciences' researcher Hannah Wauchope said that suitable breeding conditions for Arctic shorebirds could collapse by 2070.

"This means that countries throughout the world will have fewer migratory birds reaching their shores," Ms Wauchope said.

<a href="https://www.earth.com/news/antarctic-penguins-need-protection-from-human-activities/">Arctic</a> breeding shorebirds undertake some of the longest known migratory journeys in the animal kingdom, with many travelling more than 20,000 kilometres per year to escape the northern winter.

The bar-tailed godwit flies from Alaska to New Zealand in a single flight of 12,000 kilometres without landing.

The study predicts that, in a warming world, migratory birds will become increasingly restricted to small islands in the Arctic Ocean as they retreat north.

This could cause declines in hard-hit regions and some birds could even completely change migratory pathways to migrate closer to suitable habitat.

"Climate change is also opening up the Arctic to threats such as mining and tourism, and we must make sure we protect key places for all Arctic species, including these amazing migratory birds," Ms Wauchope said.

UQ's Associate Professor Richard Fuller from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED) said most migratory populations followed well-defined migratory routes.

"This makes shorebirds an excellent group to investigate how climate change might impact breeding grounds and conservation actions that could address these impacts," Associate Professor Fuller said.

The research modelled the suitable climate breeding conditions of 24 Arctic shorebirds and projected them to 2070.

The researchers also examined the impact on Arctic birds of the world's last major warming event about 6000 to 8000 years ago.

"Climatically suitable breeding conditions could shift and contract over the next 70 years, with up to 83 per cent of Arctic bird species losing most of their currently suitable area," Ms Wauchope said.

"This far exceeds the effects of the last major warming event on Earth, but genetic evidence suggests that even then the birds struggled to deal with the warming."

She said that suitable climatic conditions are predicted to decline fastest in the areas with most species (western Alaska and eastern Russia), where Arctic birds are already becoming vulnerable to the "shrubification" of the tundra, and predators such as red foxes moving north.
###
The study, Rapid climate-driven loss of breeding habitat for Arctic migratory birds, was also co-authored by colleagues at the Australian Antarctic Division, Tasmania; University Centre in Svalbard, Norway; Akvaplan-niva, Norway; Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow; Aarhus University, Denmark; and the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska, US.

It was funded by an ARC Linkage project grant and CEED.

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Climate change will leave Arctic migratory birds with nowhere to go

Climate change will leave Arctic migratory birds with nowhere to...

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NASA looks at Tropical Cyclone Abela in 3-D. Satellite data enables scientists to look at tropical cyclones in three dimensions and that provides information about rainfall rates and cloud heights.

Tropical Cyclone Abela, formerly known as "01S," formed in the South Indian Ocean on July 16, 2016. Abela was the first tropical Cyclone to form in July over the South Indian Ocean since 2007 so it is a little unusual. The Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM core observatory satellite recently had two good views of Abela. GPM saw the newly formed tropical cyclone on Jul 16, 2016 at 2216 UTC (6:16 p.m. EDT). Precipitation data collected by <a href="http://www.earth.com/product/low-flow-faucet-aerator-1-0-gpm-2-pack/">GPM's</a> Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) instruments showed that Abela contained a large area of rainfall on July 16, 2016. Then again on July 18, 2016 at 2206 UTC (6:06 p.m. EDT) the satellite passed above after tropical cyclone ABELA had reached its peak intensity with winds of about 50 knots (58 mph).

3-D slices through radar precipitation were made possible with GPM's radar (DPR Ku Band). Vertical wind shear was already starting to affect the tropical cyclone on July 18, 2016. It was revealed that the low level center of circulation was exposed and convective storms were pushed to the southeast of the center as a result of the wind shear. Some of the cloud tops of these still powerful convective storms were shown by GPM's DPR to be reaching heights of over 13.6 km (8.4 miles). Rainfall rates were as high as 60 millimeters (2.3 inches) per hour.

The imagery was created at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. GPM is a joint mission between <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA">NASA</a> and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

On July 19 at 0600 UTC (2 a.m. EDT) Tropical Cyclone Abela was located near 14.6 degrees south latitude and 55.3 degrees east longitude, about 540 nautical miles east- northeast of Antananarivo, Madagascar. At that time Abela was moving to the west at 17 knots (19.5 mph/31.4 kph) and maximum sustained winds were near 35 knots (40 mph/62 kph). Abela is expected to dissipate today, July 20.


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NASA looks at Tropical Cyclone Abela in 3-D

&nbsp; NASA looks at Tropical Cyclone Abela in 3-D. Satellite...

France and the UN are pressing governments to ratify the climate change agreement. France's environment minister, who was in charge of global climate negotiations, said Wednesday that she and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will be pressing governments to speedily ratify the historic climate change agreement reached in December.
Segolene Royal told reporters after meeting the U.N. chief that they want the agreement ratified by the time the parties to global climate talks that led to the Paris agreement hold their next meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco from Nov. 7-18.
She said she will write again to all world leaders to get their timetables for ratification and will return to Africa to talk to heads of state and government to push for speedy action.
The agreement will enter into force once 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of global emissions have formally joined it.
To spur action, Ban said Tuesday that he is inviting countries to deposit their ratifications on Sept. 21 during the annual ministerial meeting of the General Assembly.
He told a high-level meeting promoting the new U.N. goals to tackle poverty and inequality and preserve the environment that 178 countries have signed the agreement and 19 have deposited their ratifications. But he said the 19 countries account for less than one percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
The secretary-general encouraged at least 40 countries who committed to ratify the agreement by the end of the year - including major emitters like the United States, <a href="http://www.earth.com/news/mongolia-air-pollution/">China</a>, Australia, Indonesia, Mexico and Argentina - to do it sooner to accelerate its entry into force and progress on addressing climate change.
"We cannot wait any longer," Royal said. "It's time for actions. This year will be the hottest in history. Last year was the hottest in history and next year ... will be the hottest."
Under the agreement, countries set their own targets for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The targets are not legally binding, but countries must update them every five years.
Already, states face pressure to do more. Scientific analyses show the initial set of targets that countries pledged before Paris don't match the agreement's long-term goal to keep global warming below 2 degrees<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA"> Celsius</a> (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), compared with pre-industrial times. Global average temperatures have already climbed by almost 1 degree Celsius.
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France and the UN are pressing governments

France and the UN are pressing governments to ratify the...

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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;



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Flu viruses are more flexible than expected

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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;



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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

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;



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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;



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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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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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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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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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Interactive map of the universe includes 200,000 galaxies

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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

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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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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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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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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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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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The Pyrenees Mountains in southwest Europe

[sendtonews key="6HyfrAJTBI-1831843-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from the...

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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

[sendtonews key="0dEcERCq61-2283382-12187" type="single"] Today’s Video of the Day from Stowers...

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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



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.

2022 illustrated the consequences of a warming climate

[sendtonews key="3UUsNkFOuS-2487333-12187" type="single"] Today's Video of the Day from NASA...

Earth,Like,Exoplanet,3d,Render

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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



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.

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



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.

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...