What’s your approach to climate change news? Are you a looker or an ignorer? Have your answer counted in the poll at the end.
Story topics tonight include climate change (as usual), H5N1 monitoring (a new issue), COVID (still a concern), BLM agency chicanery and associated ecosystem degradation (alas, this never ends), catastrophic decline of migratory fish (ditto), mortality rate for hip fractures, human attention span decline, and another entry in the “birds are smarter than humans realize” campaign (yay!).
Life in the Dirt Is Hard. And Climate Change Isn’t Helping. (NYT paywall removed)
They’re dirt-dwelling invertebrates, but, in a sense, they’re the real backbone of Earth’s carbon cycle.
Thousands of species of mites and springtails, living in soil all around the world, provide a crucial service by munching organic matter like fallen leaves and wood, transferring its planet-warming carbon into the ground and releasing nutrients that help new plants grow.
But now, a new analysis that combined data from 38 different studies on the organisms suggests that drought in some parts of the world, often supercharged by climate change, are killing them off at alarming rates.
“It is important to take care of these critters in particular because we know so little about them,” said Ina Schaefer, a soil invertebrate ecology researcher at the University of Göttingen in Germany.
NASA launches ground-breaking climate change satellite
A 3:38 minute video explaining what the satellites will measure and why is in this tweet: “The twin satellites of this mission, launching on separate rockets, will help improve climate models by measuring the amount of heat lost to space from Earth’s polar regions.”
Thunderstorms, Wind and Climate Change: Here’s What to Know (NYT paywall removed)
Violent clusters of thunderstorms cause extensive damage across the United States each year, not just through rain and flooding, but also through hail, tornadoes and walls of blasting wind. Here’s what to know about such storms, and how they might be changing in our warming climate.
As the planet warms, severe storms of all kinds are likely to deliver even bigger payloads of rain. The reason: Warmer air holds more moisture, which effectively increases a storm’s capacity to carry precipitation ...Warming might also increase the amount of instability in the atmosphere, which provides more energy to lift moist air rapidly skyward during storms. [...]
“Theoretically we understand very well what’s happening,” said Andreas F. Prein, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. “But how this then translates into severe convective storms, and what we saw yesterday, is a little bit more questionable.”
California’s General Sherman, world’s largest tree, just got a health check. Here’s what scientists saw
“We thought that these trees took care of themselves,” Stephenson said. “The difference, though, is now conditions that allow this to happen are becoming more widespread, with extreme wildfire and higher temperatures and droughts beyond what we’ve seen in the (recent) past. … It’s a brave new world.”
also from the LA Times
“Less snow is arriving, it’s melting earlier, so there’s less water available and [these trees] need an enormous amount of water. A tree like the General Sherman can use maybe 800 to 1,000 gallons of water in a single day,” Ambrose said.
“Giant sequoias are typically thought of as being very resistant to pests and pathogens. … And now … the one-two punch of fire and drought is actually making them vulnerable to beetle attack, when previously they were able to fight them off.”
"We’ve recorded 40 large Sequoia deaths in just a few years...The trees’ 'relationship with the landscape' is changing, as a tiny beetle conspires with climate change to bring down the giant ambassadors."
Surface water temperature observations and ice phenology estimations for 1.4 million lakes globally
The first chapter of my PhD research has been published! We present LakeTEMP: a dataset of #Landsat 8 surface water temperature observations and ice phenology estimations for all lakes in the world that are larger than 0.1 km² (~1.4 million).
Sorry non-Twitter users, you won’t see the excellent graphic reporting these findings.
Nearly 60 million acres of BLM land fail to meet agency’s standards for land health
”...livestock grazing is the main reason why nearly 60 million acres of BLM rangeland fail the agency’s own standards for land health, which are used to assess soil and water quality, among other factors. High Country News recently reported on PEER’s findings, which also found that BLM state offices are increasingly relying on a federal loophole to renew grazing permits and leases without environmental review, especially in Oregon, Nevada and Idaho.”
The Bird-Flu Host We Should Worry About
“As unnerving as H5N1’s current spread in cows might be, “I would be a whole lot more concerned if this was an event in pigs’… Swine airways are evolutionary playgrounds where viruses can convert—and have converted—into ones that prefer to infect us.”
Debunking myths one ‘bug’ at a time
Early food sources for bees are pussywillow, maple, spring ephemerals, early flowering prunus, etc. Clover and dandelion are introduced plants that don't have the nutrients native bees need after overwintering. To help ppl could plants an early native flowering shrub or flowers.
The Battle for Attention How do we hold on to what matters in a distracted age?
“Consumers’ span of attention is now believed to be less than eight seconds... That is less than a goldfish.”
Getting hip to the dangers of fractures in the elderly
HIP FRACTURE DEADLIER THAN CANCER for elderly. A new study finds only 1/3 of men & 1/2 of women age>=65 still alive 5 years after a hip fracture. In contrast, 5 year cancer survival higher. But we don’t focus on fracture prevention & nutrition enough.
Detection of Hemagglutinin H5 Influenza A Virus Sequence in Municipal Wastewater Solids at Wastewater Treatment Plants with Increases in Influenza A in Spring, 2024
Today we published a study in @EnvSciTech sharing work from our team – we developed a test for & detected significant levels of H5 avian flu when analyzing samples from 4 #wastewater plants in communities near #H5N1 outbreaks.
The tweet below has a map of the US showing the level of COVID data now available for each state. The author calls it “pretty bleak.”
PMC COVID-19 Forecast, May 24, 2024 (U.S.)
Expect transmission to hover around 400,000-450,000 infections/day for the next month.
Report Details ‘Catastrophic Decline’ of Migratory Fish
Populations of salmon, trout, and other migratory fish have shrunk by 81 percent on average over the last half-century, a new report finds.
By the numbers: There are now more daily marijuana users in the US than daily alcohol users
After seeing all the headlines as you scrolled down to this point, maybe you see a connection to this datum.
You leave a 'microbe fingerprint' on every piece of clothing you wear—and it could help forensic scientists solve crimes
In our latest research published in Genes, we have shown how the population of bacteria on a person's skin leaves traces on the clothes they wear—and how these traces last for months and can be used to uniquely identify the wearer.
These crows have counting skills previously only seen in people
“Crows were asked to produce the number of vocalizations associated with an on-screen or auditory cue and to peck at an ‘enter key’ on the touchscreen monitor when they were done.”
Carrion crows (Corvus corone) can reliably caw a number of times from one to four on command — a skill that had only been seen in people. Over several months, birds were trained with treats to associate a screen showing the digits, or a related sound, with the right number of calls. The crows were not displaying a ‘true’ counting ability, which requires a symbolic understanding of numbers, say researchers. But they are nevertheless able to produce a deliberate number of vocalizations on cue, which is “a very impressive achievement”, says neuroscientist Giorgio Vallortigara.
Birdsong and human voice built from same genetic blueprint
Humans have been long fascinated by bird song and the cacophony of other avian sounds -- from coos and honks to quacks and peeps. But little is known about how the unique vocal organ of birds -- the syrinx -- varies from species to species or its deeper evolutionary origins. A trio of recent studies is changing that. The studies include high-resolution anatomical scans of syrinxes from hummingbirds and ostriches -- the world's smallest and largest bird species -- and the discovery that the syrinx and larynx, the vocal organ of reptiles and mammals, including humans, share the same developmental programming.
Climate change memes — A twitter thread started by disasterologist Dr. Samantha Montano
“I'm updating my climate change lecture for my intro to emergency management class. Please send your favorite climate change memes.”
The poll wasn’t showing up in the published version altho it was visible in edit mode so I sent a message to the Help Desk Saturday night. Sunday morning I had a reply from them and it was fixed. MANY THANKS TO THE TECH PERSON WHO WORKED ON A HOLIDAY WEEKEND TO FIX THIS!