The huge Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is out of sight for most of the world. It often doesn’t even cross their minds: It plays a critical role in Earth’s climate, but because the conditions are so wild and dangerous, far less research has been done there than in other oceans.
This is now changing, thanks in large part to autonomous water-measuring buoys that drift up, down and around the ocean, regularly surfacing to send data to satellites. With so much new information at hand, oceanographers and climate scientists are now learning more about the Southern Ocean. And what they’ve learned is alarming. The ocean is changing as the world warms, as a result of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Aspect I wrote in an article this week The changes — one accompanied by fascinating visualizations created by some of the new buoy data by my colleague Jeremy White — have big implications for the future. The Southern Ocean could eventually release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, making it harder for the world to reduce emissions enough to stop global warming. And the ocean could accelerate the melting of Antarctic ice, which threatens to make the largest long-term contributor to sea level rise.
Key numbers: By some estimates, the oceans have received about 25 percent of the excess carbon dioxide and more than 90 percent of the excess heat from fossil fuel burning and other human activities since the 19th century.
Hurricanes and climate change
In recent years, rapid association studies have enabled scientists to understand how climate change is exacerbating hurricanes, heatwaves, floods and droughts. But so far, the same can’t be said for hurricanes like those that pierced six states this month.
Even as scientists learn more about hurricanes and their behavior, it remains unclear exactly what role warming plays. Why? One reason is that the hoses are small. This makes them difficult to model, and modeling is the primary tool scientists use when linking extreme weather events to climate change. Another is that tornadoes are incredibly complex and only form when perfect conditions come together.
quotation: “This is the most difficult phenomenon to link to climate change,” said Michael Tippett, associate professor of applied physics and mathematics at Columbia University.
Request what we know and what we don’t know, about hurricanes.
A cleaner, greener federal government
Biden management announced this month That every United States government building must be powered by clean energy within 10 years, and that by 2035 all new cars and trucks in the federal fleet must be zero-emissions.
Officials said achieving these goals would make the government carbon neutral by 2050 and support the clean energy and vehicle market. “As the largest landowner, energy consumer and employer in the nation, the federal government can accelerate private sector investment,” the White House said in a statement laying out the new rules.
What’s next: Purchasing rules issued by administrative order can take effect without a lengthy regulatory process. But that doesn’t mean the effort will be easy. Several Republicans have criticized the plan, and if their party gains control of any chamber of Congress next year, they could cut off funding. A future Republican president could easily reverse the plan, too.
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A hawk wearing a special camera and microphone placed to fly through swarms of bats. A baby turtle with a satellite transmitter attached to its shell. An animal as small as a wasp equipped with a tag to track its movements.
As scientists race to slow a catastrophic decline in biodiversity, technology gives them the latest tools. After all, protecting wild species helps to understand them. But according to one New study in Conservation Biology, researchers are not making the most of new technology.
“We don’t really take advantage of it as much as we need to keep up with these conservation challenges,” said Talia Speaker, co-author and research leader at WILDLABS, a group focused on conservation technology. “We need to be able to work more effectively together, share data and ask questions on this massive global scale.”
Check out these for more wildlife and technology photos.
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