# data[].attributes.body
This article is about how Alaska's permafrost, which stores ancient carbon could be gone soon due to the Earth warming. Permafrost contains twice as much carbon as the atmosphere does - which is saying a lot. By permafrost melting globally, it creates a serious loss of carbon for us. This can cause a problem because the more carbon that is released into the atmosphere, the more prominent global warming becomes and it creates a loop effect. Scientists are not completely sure when Alaska's permafrost will completely thaw, but there is stark evidence that it is thawing at an alarming rate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
YUKON DELTA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Alaska - The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as other parts of the planet, and even here in sub-Arctic Alaska the rate of warming is high. Sea ice and wildlife habitat are disappearing; higher sea levels threaten coastal native villages.

But to the scientists from Woods Hole Research Center who have come here to study the effects of climate change, the most urgent is the fate of permafrost, the always-frozen ground that underlies much of the state.

Starting just a few feet below the surface and extending tens or even hundreds of feet down, it contains vast amounts of carbon in organic matter - plants that took carbon dioxide from the atmosphere centuries ago, died and froze before they could decompose. Worldwide, permafrost is thought to contain about twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere.

Once this ancient organic material thaws, microbes convert some of it to carbon dioxide and methane, which can flow into the atmosphere and cause even more warming. Scientists have estimated that the process of permafrost thawing could contribute as much as 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit to global warming over the next several centuries, independent of what society does to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels and other activities.

In Alaska, nowhere is permafrost more vulnerable than here, 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle, in a vast, largely treeless landscape formed from sediment brought down by two of the state's biggest rivers, the Yukon and the Kuskokwim. Temperatures three feet down into the frozen ground are less than half a degree below freezing. This area could lose much of its permafrost by midcentury.

That, said Max Holmes, senior scientist and deputy director of the research center, "has all kinds of consequences both locally for this region, for the animals and the people who live here, as well as globally."

"It's sobering to think of this magnificent landscape and how fundamentally it can change over a relatively short time period," he added.

But on this wide, flat tundra, it takes a practiced eye to see how Alaska is thawing from below.

At one of the countless small lakes that pepper the region, chunks of shoreline that include what had been permafrost have calved off toward the water.

Nearby, across a spongy bed of mosses and lichens, a small boggy depression most likely formed when the ice in the top layers of the permafrost below it melted to water.

In July, the Woods Hole scientists, along with 13 undergraduate and graduate students working on projects of their own, set up a temporary field station on a nameless lake 60 miles northwest of Bethel, which with a population of 6,000 is the largest town in the region. They drilled permafrost cores with a power auger, took other sediment and water samples and embedded temperature probes in the frozen ground. Later, back in the lab at Woods Hole, they began the process of analyzing the samples for carbon content and nutrients.

The goal is to better understand how thawing permafrost affects the landscape and, ultimately, how much and what mix of greenhouse gases is released.

"In order to know how much is lost, you have to know how much is there," said Sue Natali, a Woods Hole scientist and permafrost expert.

Even in colder northern Alaska, where permafrost in some parts of the North Slope extends more than 2,100 feet below the surface, scientists are seeing stark changes. Vladimir E. Romanovsky, a permafrost researcher at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, said that temperatures at a depth of 65 feet have risen by 3 degrees Celsius (about 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over decades.

Near-surface changes have been even greater. At one northern site, he said, permafrost temperatures at shallow depths have climbed from minus 8 degrees Celsius to minus 3.

"Minus 3 is not that far from zero," Dr. Romanovsky said. If emissions and warming continue at the same rate, he said, near-surface temperatures will rise above freezing around the middle of the century.

There is plenty of debate among scientists about when and how much of Alaska's permafrost will thaw. And there is no doubt that thawing of the full depth of permafrost would take millenniums.

But Dr. Romanovsky said that his and others' work shows that permafrost "is not as stable as people thought."

In addition to greenhouse gas emissions, thawing wreaks havoc on infrastructure, causing slumping of land when ice loses volume as it turns to water.

The main road in Bethel, where average temperatures have risen about 4 degrees Fahrenheit since the mid-20th century, is more of a washboard than a thoroughfare because of shifting ground. Building foundations in Bethel move and crack as well. Some roads, airport runways and parking areas have to be reinforced with liquid-filled pipes that transfer heat out of the permafrost to keep the ground from slumping.

The thawing of permafrost is a gradual process. Ground is fully frozen in winter, and begins to thaw from the top down as air temperatures rise in spring. As average temperatures increase over years, this thawed, or active, layer can increase in depth.

At the field station, the researchers are especially interested in how wildfires affect the permafrost. Because burning removes some of the vegetation that acts as insulation, the theory is that burning should cause permafrost to thaw more.

Parts of the tundra here burned in the 1970s and in the summer of 2015, so the researchers took cores from both burned and unburned areas. Scientists wrestled with the bulky power auger as its stainless steel tube worked its way into the hard permafrost. Cores - often containing thin layers of solid ice - were labeled, packed in a cooler and sent by helicopter to a freezer in Bethel.

Thawing permafrost underneath or at the edge of a lake can cause it to drain like a leaky bathtub. Thawing elsewhere can bring about small elevation changes that can in turn lead to changes in water flow through the landscape, drying out some parts of the tundra and turning others into bogs.

Beyond the local effects on plant and animal life, the landscape changes can have an important climate change impact, by altering the mix of carbon dioxide and methane that is emitted. Although methane does not persist in the atmosphere for as long as carbon dioxide, it has a far greater heat-trapping ability and can contribute to more rapid warming.

So the researchers devote much of their time to studying the flow of water and the carbon and nutrients it contains.

"It's one of the big questions to tackle - what's wet and dry now, and what will be wet and dry in the future," Dr. Natali said. If the decomposing permafrost is wet, there will be less oxygen available to the microbes, so they will produce more methane. If the permafrost is dry, the decomposition will lead to more carbon dioxide.

Estimates vary on how much carbon is currently released from thawing permafrost worldwide, but by one calculation emissions over the rest of the century could average about 1.5 billion tons a year, or about the same as current annual emissions from fossil-fuel burning in the United States.

Already, thawing permafrost and warmer temperatures are being blamed for rising carbon emissions in the Alaskan tundra, both here and farther north. In a study earlier this year, researchers found that bacterial decomposition of thawed permafrost, as well as carbon dioxide produced by living vegetation, continues later into the fall because freezing of the surface is delayed.

The rise in emissions has been so significant, the researchers found, that Alaska may be shifting from a sink, or storehouse, of carbon, to a net source.

Dr. Holmes said that shift was not surprising given the climate trend, and he would expect that sub-Arctic parts of Siberia, Canada and other areas with permafrost may be undergoing similar changes.

"There's a massive amount of carbon that's in the ground, that's built up slowly over thousands and thousands of years," he said.

"It's been in a freezer, and that freezer is now turning into a refrigerator."

Correction August 23, 2017

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to an estimate of the amount of carbon released from thawing permafrost worldwide. It is 1.5 billion tons a year averaged over the remainder of the century, not 1.5 billions tons a year currently.

Correction August 25, 2017

An earlier version of this article misspelled, in one instance, the surname of a permafrost researcher at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. He is Vladimir E. Romanovsky, not Ramonovsky.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
YUKON DELTA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Alaska - The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as other parts of the planet, and even here in sub-Arctic Alaska the rate of warming is high. Sea ice and wildlife habitat are disappearing; higher sea levels threaten coastal native villages.

# data[].attributes.headline
A 500 Year Flood Could Happen Again Sooner Than You Think. Here's Why.

# data[].attributes.subject
A 500 Year Flood Could Happen Again Sooner Than You Think. Here's Why.

# data[].attributes.body
This article talks about how a 500 year flood could be happening soon. A 500 year flood is what the government says when predicting the chance of a flood or any catastrophic event occurring. A 500 year event has a 1 in 500 chance of happening in a given year. They are able to determine this with historic data through patterns scientist see. Due to the climate change the Earth has been going through recently, the scientists predictions may be altered. A flood or storm as bad as Hurricane Harvey is rare, but the probability of it happening lies somewhere in the year of 2517.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Wow - Now experts are calling #Harvey a once in 500 year flood! We have an all out effort going, and going well!
- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 27, 2017

In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, President Trump tweeted that the storm had brought a "once in 500 year flood" to Houston, and expressed support for relief efforts. His words suggested the kind of catastrophic event that hadn't been seen in the area for five centuries. But parts of Houston saw "500-year flooding" just last year. And in 2001, Tropical Storm Allison also delivered severe flooding to the area.

Harvey has been even more devastating, and officials say the flooding is the worst in state history. But is it really a once-in-500-years event?

Terms like "500-year flood" and "100-year flood" are used as shorthand by government officials and actuaries, but they are misnomers that can confuse the public, said Sandra Knight, a senior research engineer at the University of Maryland and a former official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Rather than predicting the timing of a flood, these terms refer to the chance of it occurring at all.
A 500-year event has a 1 in 500 chance ofoccurring in a single year. A 100-year event has a 1 in 100 chance of occurring in a single year. A 10-year event has a 1 in 10 chance of occurring in a single year.
You get the idea.

"People think: 'Well, it's a one-in-100-year flood. We had one last year, so it won't happen again,'" Dr. Knight said. But really, "they can happen back to back."

A 100-year flood means there is a 1 percent chance - or 1 in 100 - that a flood of that magnitude will occur in that given location in any one year. In 500-year flood zones, the probability goes down to 0.2 percent. In other words: not very likely to happen - or, at least, not likely based on historical data, which helps scientists to determine these probabilities.

Here is a map of Houston's flood zones as defined by FEMA. It shows the areas that have a 1-in-500 chance of flooding, and a 1-in-100 chance of flooding. (FEMA uses various scales for 100-year floods, which we've rolled into one below.)

But changing landscapes - and a changing climate - could alter the probability of flooding.

"We're looking at historical data when really we have something that is called non-stationarity," Dr. Knight said. "The world isn't stationary anymore and the hydrology isn't. The landscape isn't. So why are we still presuming the future will look like the past?"

In Houston, factors like rapid urbanization over the past few decades have already affected how and where water flows, she said, and climate change will strengthen the likelihood and severity of future extreme events.

Devastating storms like Harvey are still relatively rare, "but the probability of them occurring has increased substantially because of climate change," said Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "What used to be a 500-year event has become a 50- or 100-year event."

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has not yet classified the deluge caused by Hurricane Harvey as a 500-year flood, but some scientists say it may ultimately exceed the mark. Now you know what that means: Such flooding was unlikely, but it could happen again before the distant year 2517.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
A '500-Year Flood' Could Happen Again Sooner Than You Think. Here's Why.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Wow - Now experts are calling #Harvey a once in 500 year flood! We have an all out effort going, and going well!- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 27, 2017 In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, President Trump tweeted that the storm had brought a "once in 500 year flood" to Houston, and expressed support for relief efforts.

# data[].attributes.headline
In Antarctica, Two Crucial Glaciers Accelerate Toward The Sea

# data[].attributes.subject
In Antarctica, Two Crucial Glaciers Accelerate Toward The Sea

# data[].attributes.body
This article is about Antarctica's fastest moving glaciers shedding ice at a rate that is too fast into the sea. The two glaciers hold ice that could raise ocean water levels up by four feet if the ice were to melt into the sea. This is happening due to the warm waters in front of the long rivers of ice. The Pine Island glacier and Thwaities glacier have been shedding ice rapidly due to increasing earth temperatures which causes the ocean water to be warmer. If this problem is to continue, the ocean levels could destroy coastal residences around the world.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Pine Island and

Thwaites glaciers

Two of the frozen continent's fastest-moving glaciers are shedding an increasing amount of ice into the Amundsen Sea each year.

The Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers are among the most critical in the world. They are currently holding back ice that, if melted, would raise the world's oceans by nearly four feet over centuries, an amount that would put many coastal cities underwater.

Pine Island glacier

Glaciers are essentially long rivers of ice. Just as a river collects water that drains from a specific area, Antarctica's glaciers collect ice from parts of the great ice sheets that cover the continent. The amount of ice that could flow into the Pine Island glacier and then into the sea would eventually raise the world's sea level by over a foot and a half.

The animation above shows Pine Island glacier flowing into the Amundsen Sea from 2014 to 2017. Twice in that period, the glacier released an iceberg larger than 100 square miles.

The Pine Island's flow is accelerating rapidly. Its ice shelf, an expanse of ice that floats on water where the glacier meets the sea, has increased its speed by 75 percent from 1973 to 2010.

"This is a result of the warmer waters in front of them," said Eric Rignot, a climate scientist at the University of California, Irvine, who has done extensive research on polar ice.

"In some relatively colder years, we know the melt rate slowed down and the glaciers slowed down. On warm ocean years, the glacier moves really fast."
In the 1980s, Pine Island gained about as much ice as it lost every year. Now, the glacier is out of balance.
About 100 miles southwest of Pine Island, Thwaites glacier is also shedding more and more ice into the ocean.

The amount of ice that could flow into it and then into the sea would increase global sea level by more than two feet.

Because Thwaites is about 75 miles wide and isn't confined to a valley the way Pine Island is, there is potential for much larger releases of ice if the glacier's flow continues to speed up.

"These two glaciers could easily flow two to three times faster - that's what the models show," Dr. Rignot said. "If Pine Island's shelf were to break up, the glacier would respond by speeding up two to three times."
Thwaites glacier also veered from equilibrium in the late 1980s, but hasn't been shedding as much ice as Pine Island.
This year's ice calving events at Pine Island and Thwaites have not caused significant changes in the region, because the shifts have been in areas that did not provide critical support to the glaciers.

The movement of the ice, however, offers scientists a window into how Antarctic ice shelves might respond to rapid changes and how a runaway disintegration of the hundreds of Antarctic glaciers might look.

"There isn't a glacier in Antarctica that comes close to the ice discharge to Pine Island and Thwaites," Dr. Rignot said. "They are the largest discharger of ice in the Antarctic right now."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
In Antarctica, Two Crucial Glaciers Accelerate Toward the Sea

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers Two of the frozen continent's fastest-moving glaciers are shedding an increasing amount of ice into the Amundsen Sea each year. The Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers are among the most critical in the world.

# data[].attributes.headline
Early bloomers: Statistical tool reveals climate change impacts on plants

# data[].attributes.subject
Early bloomers: Statistical tool reveals climate change impacts on plants

# data[].attributes.body
This article challenges the topic of whether global warming is confirming that shifts in plant phenology are caused due to global warming or if it's just by coincidence. Plants are blossoming at a quicker rate, many common people and scientists have reported. The obvious cause to this is climate change, and that the plants are "confused" by the unpredictable weather patterns climate change comes with. The human activity that creates climate change is creating an issue with plant growth, which could be bad for our food industry in the long run.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Early flowering, early fruiting: Anecdotal evidence of climate change is popping up as quickly as spring crocuses, but is it coincidence or confirmation of shifts in plant phenology caused by global warming?

"My mum reports her snowdrops are blooming earlier each spring in her English garden," says Utah State University scientist Will Pearse. "Are her observations, like those of thousands of citizen scientists across the world, indicating unpredictability in temperature, precipitation and other weather patterns?"

Until now, scientists had few tools to piece together disparate data into a collective, bigger picture. Now, Pearse and colleagues announce a statistical estimator that extracts meaningful measures of phenological change -- that is, the timing of plants' reoccurring life history events -- from scores of data collected by current and ancestral citizen scientists (Henry David Thoreau among the latter cohort), along a continuous record from herbaria plant collections stretching more than 200 years into the past. Their findings appear in the Nov. 6, 2017, online edition of Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Contributing authors include Charles Davis, Harvard University; David Inouye, University of Maryland and Colorado's Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory; Richard Primack, Boston University; and T. Jonathan Davies of Canada's McGill University. The team's research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the USA National Phenology Network.

"Using this estimator, and providing three case studies, we demonstrate a method to resolve an ongoing debate about the relative timings of the onset and cessation of flowering that allows us to reliably place modern observations within the context of a vast wealth of historical data," says Pearse, assistant professor in USU's Department of Biology and the USU Ecology Center and lead author of the paper. "This provides powerful evidence of climate change."

Davies says the estimator unlocks "dusty specimens" hidden away in dried plant collections.

"Our work provides new insights into how human activities have altered today's climate by contrasting the time a flower bloomed in the past to observation in the present-day," he says.

Pearse says the new technique also unleashes the power, and emphasizes the value, of citizen science. He especially praises the efforts of the USA National Phenology Network.

"If you ever doubted the observations of an 'ordinary' observer, you can put those doubts to rest," he says. "Those bits of information, like my mum's vigilance and Thoreau's fervent environmentalism, contribute to invaluable scientific observation."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
nature; endangered plants; biology; climate; global warming; environmental awareness; statistics; computer modeling; information technology

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Early bloomers: Statistical tool reveals climate change impacts on plants: Statistical 'trick' that extracts meaningful measures of phenological change from disparate sources

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Early flowering, early fruiting: Anecdotal evidence of climate change is popping up as quickly as spring crocuses, but is it coincidence or confirmation of shifts in plant phenology caused by global warming? "My mum reports her snowdrops are blooming earlier each spring in her English garden," says Utah State University scientist Will Pearse.

# data[].attributes.headline
Mammals switched to daytime activity after dinosaur extinction

# data[].attributes.subject
Mammals switched to daytime activity after dinosaur extinction

# data[].attributes.body
This article is about how the extinction of one species impacts another species greatly. It shows that before dinosaurs disappeared, mammals were more active during the night than the day. It was not an instant change, since mammals showed a mixture of both day and night activity for millions of years. There are certain adaptations to specific mammals that prove this discovery correct. For example, in simian primates, they have certain adaptations to help them see during the day. Scientists are still trying to pinpoint exactly when the change occurred through further research.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mammals only started being active in the daytime after non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out about 66 million years ago (mya), finds a new study led by UCL and Tel Aviv University's Steinhardt Museum of Natural History.

A long-standing theory holds that the common ancestor to all mammals was nocturnal, but the new discovery reveals when mammals started living in the daytime for the first time. It also provides insight into which species changed behaviour first.

The study, published today in Nature Ecology & Evolution, analysed data of 2415 species of mammals alive today using computer algorithms to reconstruct the likely activity patterns of their ancient ancestors who lived millions of years ago.

Two different mammalian family trees portraying alternative timelines for the evolution of mammals were used in the analysis. The results from both show that mammals switched to daytime activity shortly after the dinosaurs had disappeared. This change did not happen in an instant -- it involved an intermediate stage of mixed day and night activity over millions of years, which coincided with the events that decimated the dinosaurs.

"We were very surprised to find such close correlation between the disappearance of dinosaurs and the beginning of daytime activity in mammals, but we found the same result unanimously using several alternative analyses," explained lead author, PhD student Roi Maor (Tel Aviv University and UCL).

The team found that the ancestors of simian primates -- such as gorillas, gibbons and tamarins -- were among the first to give up nocturnal activity altogether. However, the two evolutionary timelines varied, giving a window between 52-33 mya for this to have occurred.

This discovery fits well with the fact that simian primates are the only mammals that have evolved adaptations to seeing well in daylight. The visual acuity and colour perception of simians is comparable to those of diurnal reptiles and birds -- groups that never left the daytime niche.

"It's very difficult to relate behaviour changes in mammals that lived so long ago to ecological conditions at the time, so we can't say that the dinosaurs dying out caused mammals to start being active in the daytime. However, we see a clear correlation in our findings," added co-author Professor Kate Jones (UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment).

"We analysed a lot of data on the behaviour and ancestry of living animals for two reasons -- firstly, because the fossil record from that era is very limited and secondly, behaviour as a trait is very hard to infer from fossils," explained co-author, Professor Tamar Dayan (Chair of The Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, Tel Aviv University).

"You have to observe a living mammal to see if it is active at night or in the day. Fossil evidence from mammals often suggest that they were nocturnal even if they were not. Many subsequent adaptations that allow us to live in daylight are in our soft tissues."

The team say further research is needed to better populate the mammalian family tree to give more accurate information on when the behaviour of species changes from night time to day time activity.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
nature; wild animals; evolutionary biology; climate; environmental science; early mammals; fossils; dinosaurs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mammals switched to daytime activity after dinosaur extinction

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Mammals only started being active in the daytime after non-avian dinosaurs were wiped out about 66 million years ago (mya), finds a new study led by UCL and Tel Aviv University's Steinhardt Museum of Natural History.

# data[].attributes.headline
Protecting 'high carbon' rain forest areas also protects threatened wildlife

# data[].attributes.subject
Protecting 'high carbon' rain forest areas also protects threatened wildlife

# data[].attributes.body
This article is about how carbon based policies benefit both forests and mammal diversity. These policies have been put into effect across the world, and consists of reducing the release of greenhouse gases by reducing deforestation. Deforestation is from human activity such as agriculture. Certain UN groups are trying the enforce conservation of forest areas. Protecting forests has been proven to benefit an area's biodiversity. These findings and results from research have been important for the UN's policy makers as it shows validity to the policies they try to enforce.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Conservation efforts focused on protecting forests using carbon-based policies also benefit mammal diversity, new research at the University of Kent has found.

To help mitigate the effects of climate change, policies have been developed across the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing deforestation.

Much of this deforestation is caused by large-scale agriculture and extractive industries in developing tropical countries.

The UN's Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) framework, and, more recently, the High Carbon Stock (HCS) Approach, aim to identify and conserve forest areas that retain a lot of carbon, which would be released into the atmosphere if felled, therefore justifying protection.

Major agricultural companies, such as those growing oil palm, are now using these carbon mechanisms as part of global commitments to 'zero deforestation'.

In the past it has been assumed that protecting forests to prevent carbon release is also beneficial for biodiversity in the area too. However, previous studies have proved inconclusive.

To tackle this assumption, a team of researchers from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) at the University of Kent, have been undertaking wildlife surveys in the forests of Borneo, in an area undergoing conversion to oil palm.

Lead researcher, Nicolas Deere, gathered a comprehensive dataset of mammals derived from camera-trap images and combined this with high-resolution satellite imagery to show that areas designated for protection under carbon policies were also rich in endangered mammals.

In particular, the study confirmed that no correlation between carbon and biodiversity was evident when globally-available carbon maps were used. However, when high-resolution maps were used to map carbon resources, areas of high carbon were clearly seen to support the most mammal species.

This relationship was driven by species of conservation concern such as orangutan and clouded leopards, suggesting that mammals vulnerable to deforestation and forest degradation will benefit the most from carbon policies.

The findings have important implications for policymakers in business, government and non-government organisations, by confirming that REDD+ and HCS approaches to designate land for protection have strong potential for biodiversity conservation in the oil palm sector too.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
forest; rainforests; global warming; ecology; air quality; biodiversity; environmental science; climate

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Protecting 'high carbon' rainforest areas also protects threatened wildlife

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Conservation efforts focused on protecting forests using carbon-based policies also benefit mammal diversity, new research at the University of Kent has found. To help mitigate the effects of climate change, policies have been developed across the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing deforestation.

# data[].attributes.headline
Warming ocean water is turning 99 percent of these sea turtles female

# data[].attributes.subject
Warming ocean water is turning 99 percent of these sea turtles female

# data[].attributes.body
This article essentially talks about climate change and global warming's impact on nature. Due to waters increasing in temperature, more than 99% of baby green sea turtles are female. The gender they are born as is very dependent on temperature. The sex ratio of turtles born in the Northern Great Barrier Reef is 1 male for every 116 females. This can cause an issue as a sex imbalance within the population can cause for less reproduction, due to there being no males for the females to reproduce with. No reproduction can lead to the extinction of the turtle species.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Warming waters are turning some sea turtle populations female - to the extreme. More than 99 percent of young green turtles born on beaches along the northern Great Barrier Reef are female, researchers report January 8 in Current Biology. If that imbalance in sex continues, the overall population could shrink.

Green sea turtle embryos develop as male or female depending on the temperature at which they incubate in sand. Scientists have known that warming ocean waters are skewing sea turtle populations toward having more females, but quantifying the imbalance has been hard.

Researchers analyzed hormone levels in turtles collected on the Great Barrier Reef (off the northeastern coast of Australia) to determine their sex, and then used genetic data to link individuals to the beaches where the animals originated. That two-pronged approach allowed the scientists to estimate the ratio of males to females born at different sites.

The sex ratio in the overall population is "nothing out of the ordinary," with roughly one juvenile male for every four juvenile females, says study coauthor Michael Jensen, a marine biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in La Jolla, Calif. But breaking the data down by the turtles' region of origin revealed worrisome results. In the cooler southern Great Barrier Reef, 67 percent of hatched juveniles were female. But more than 99 percent of young turtles hatched in sand soaked by warmer waters in the northern Great Barrier Reef were female - with one male for every 116 females. That imbalance has increased over time: 86 percent of the adults born in the area more than 20 years ago were female.

It's unclear what the long-term impact of such a strong skew will be, but it's probably not good news for the turtles. Sea turtle populations can get by with fewer males than females ( SN: 3/4/17, p. 16), but scientists aren't sure how many is too few. And while turtles can adapt their behavior, such as laying eggs in cooler places, the animals' instinct is to nest in the same spot they were born, which works against such a change.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Warming ocean water is turning 99 percent of these sea turtles female

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Warming waters are turning some sea turtle populations female - to the extreme. More than 99 percent of young green turtles born on beaches along the northern Great Barrier Reef are female, researchers report January 8 in Current Biology. If that imbalance in sex continues, the overall population could shrink.

# data[].attributes.headline
The mystery of vanishing honeybees is still not definitively solved

# data[].attributes.subject
The mystery of vanishing honeybees is still not definitively solved

# data[].attributes.body
This article discusses CCD, or Colony Collapse Disorder. In particular, it discusses the mystery of the collapsing of the bee colonies. Stemming from 2007, the losses of honeybees and honeybee workers has been considered a phenomenon. No one knows the direct cause for this sudden disappearance, and much research is being put into this enigma. Bee colony losses are still at a high even to this day.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It was one of the flashiest mysteries in the news about a decade ago - honeybee workers were vanishing fast for no clear reason. To this day, that puzzle has never been entirely solved, researchers acknowledge.

And maybe it never will be. Colony collapse disorder, or CCD, as the sudden mass honeybee losses were called, has faded in recent years as mysteriously as it began. It's possible the disappearances could start up again, but meanwhile bees are facing other problems.

CCD probably peaked around 2007 and faded since, says Jeff Pettis, who during the heights of national curiosity was running the Beltsville, Md., honeybee lab for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's research wing. And five years have passed since Dennis vanEngelsdorp, who studies bee health at the University of Maryland in College Park, has seen a "credible case" of colony collapse.

Beekeepers still report some cases, but Pettis and vanEngelsdorp aren't convinced such cases really are colony collapse disorder, a term that now gets used for a slew of things that are bad for bees. To specialists, colony collapse is a specific phenomenon. An apparently healthy colony over the course of days or a few weeks loses much of its workforce, while eggs and larvae, and often the queen herself, remain alive. Also food stores in collapsing colonies don't get raided by other bees as a failing colony's treasures usually do.

"I think I know what happened," says Pettis, now in Salisbury, Md., consulting on pollinator health. His proposed scenario for CCD, like those of some other veterans of the furor, is complex and doesn't rest on a single exotic killer. But so far, no experiment has nailed the proof.

On a suspect's trail

Looking back, Pettis realizes he had heard about what might have been early cases of CCD, described as colonies "just falling apart," for several years before the phenomenon made headlines. Then in November 2006, Pennsylvania beekeeper David Hackenberg, as usual, sent his colonies to Florida for the winter. They arrived in fine shape. Soon after, however, many buzzing colonies had shrunk to stragglers. Yet there were no dire parasite infestations and no dead bee bodies in sight.

"It was, 'OK, something weird just happened,' " remembers Jay Evans of the USDA's honeybee lab in Beltsville. "It looked like a 'flu,' something that kind of swept through miraculously fast."

No single menace, however, could be tightly linked to every sick colony, or only to sick colonies. Varroa mites, small hive beetles, Nosema fungi, deformed wing virus, unusual signs of pesticide exposure, for instance -screening techniques at the time just weren't picking up a clear pattern in any of these bee bedevilments.

"People were following this story like crazy," Pettis says. The bees' unexplained plight prompted a national outbreak of amateur entomology. "There were people saying, 'Why aren't you doing more with jet contrails?' There were 'alien abductions.' And the rapture - the bees were being called home."

Entomologists were hounded by the press, not to mention leaned on by politicians and pursued by would-be entrepreneurs. "For me, what made it rewarding," Pettis says, "was that people were learning about the value of pollination."
A Columbia University researcher who had identified pathogens in mysterious human disease outbreaks took a crack at the problem. Ian Lipkin had never worked with bees, but he and his lab collaborated with entomologists and other bee specialists to search for any genetic signature of a pathogen appearing only in collapsing colonies. The approach of searching through mass samples, with their messy traces of gut microbes and random parasites, is now familiar as metagenomics. At the time, this way of searching for pathogens was groundbreaking, says collaborator Diana Cox-Foster, then at Penn State. The resulting paper, in Science, pointed to several viruses, especially the previously obscure Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, or IAPV (SN: 9/8/07, p. 147).
That emphasis on IAPV, which got a lot of attention at the time, hasn't held up well. "It's not 100 percent ruled out," Evans says. But the explanation's main problem is shared by other threats proposed as a single cause of CCD. After finding IAPV or another presumed single menace in sick bees in one place, he says, "you could go to other apiaries that were collapsing and not find it, or you could find it in healthier colonies."

As an apiary inspector for Pennsylvania at the time, vanEngelsdorp monitored for signs of collapse in over 200 hives. "We tried to watch it happen but we couldn't," he says. None collapsed. Even finding the sickest bees in collapsing colonies was a challenge. Doomed bees presumably flew off in multiple directions, and birds or other scavengers usually found the bees before scientists could.

A gang of killers

Pettis now sees the disaster as a two-step process. Various stressors such as poor nutrition and pesticide exposure weakened bees so much that a virus, maybe IAPV, could quickly kill them in droves. Evans, too, sees various stressors mixing and matching. When pressed for his best guess, he says "all of the above."

Cox-Foster has managed to re-create part of the process, the vanishing effect that marked the end for stressed bees. When she infected honeybee colonies in a greenhouse with a virus, the sick bees left the hive but were trapped by the greenhouse walls before dispersing too far to be found. (Of course, this experiment doesn't demonstrate how colonies with no sign of a virus died.)

That tendency for sick bees to leave hives, vanEngelsdorp proposes, could have developed as a hygiene benefit. "Altruistic suicide," as social-insect biologists call it. Flying away from the colony could minimize a sick bee's tendency to pass disease to the rest of the family.

Still losing bees

Today, hive losses remain high even with CCD waning or gone, according to national surveys by the Bee Informed Partnership, a nonprofit bee health collaboration. Beekeepers typically note that they either expect or can tolerate annual losses between 15 and 20 percent of their total number of colonies. Yet from April 2016 until March 2017, losses across the United States ran at about a third of hives. And that was a so-called good year, the second-lowest loss in the seven years with data on annual losses.

Classic CCD may not be much threat these days, but the "four p's" - poor nutrition, pesticides, pathogens and parasites - are, says Cox-Foster, now at a USDA lab for pollinating insects in Logan, Utah. While honeybees aren't likely to go extinct, these threats to the beekeeping industry boost pollination costs, which could affect food prices.

Coping with the four p's may not fire the imaginations of armchair entomologists. But it's more than enough of a challenge for the bees.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The mystery of vanishing honeybees is still not definitively solved

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It was one of the flashiest mysteries in the news about a decade ago - honeybee workers were vanishing fast for no clear reason. To this day, that puzzle has never been entirely solved, researchers acknowledge. And maybe it never will be.

# data[].attributes.headline
Researchers explore psychological effects of climate change

# data[].attributes.subject
Researchers explore psychological effects of climate change

# data[].attributes.body
This article is about how climate change may be taking a toll on human mental health. Recently, a new study has shown proof of this occurring. A cause for bad mental healthy relating to climate change could be the anxiety of breathing in polluted air, or other things such as drinking dirtied water. Anxiety also can form from fear of the future and how future generations will survive. Online surveys have shown that young people are stressed about global warming and climate change, and this stress has been noted to link to depression.

# data[].attributes.headline
As Greenland Melts,Where’s the Water Going?

# data[].attributes.subject
As Greenland Melts,Where’s the Water Going?

# data[].attributes.body
This article talks about not enough water from an ice sheet flows into the ocean, therefore impacting rising ocean water calculations. This is a problem because rising ocean waters is one of the main effects of climate change. Instead of melted ice going into the ocean, scientists have found water retention. The ice sheet is very big, and not much is known about it. It is located in Greenland. Greenland loses tons of ice due to global warming, and this new found ice sheet data can tamper with those calculations and data.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On Greenland's vast ice sheet, meltwater flows in rivulets as sunlight and warm air heat the surface ice.

Surface variations create thousands of low-lying areas where meltwater collects and eventually drains.

The rivulets drain into larger rivers that carve natural paths across the ice sheet.

Over years, impurities in the ice become concentrated, making it darker. Those areas absorb more sunlight, causing more melting.

Underneath the surface, the ice develops holes, like swiss cheese.

This river reached a large depression in the ice and formed a lake.

The lake fed another fast-moving river on the opposite side.

That river disappeared down a hole in the ice, called a moulin.

Sea level rise depends on how much water drains from the ice sheet into the ocean, and how fast.

New research suggests that more of the water may be trapped inside the ice sheet than previously thought.

On Greenland's vast ice sheet, meltwater flows in rivulets as sunlight and warm air heat the surface ice.

Surface variations create thousands of low-lying areas where meltwater collects and drains.

The rivulets drain to larger rivers that carve natural paths across the ice sheet.

Over years, impurities in the ice become concentrated, making it darker. Those areas absorb more heat, and cause greater melting.

This river reached a depression in the ice and formed a lake, which fed another river on the opposite side.

That river disappeared down a hole in the ice, called a moulin.

Sea level rise depends on how much water drains from the ice sheet into the ocean. New research suggests there may be more water trapped in the ice than previously thought.

In the summer of 2015, two New York Times journalists joined a team of researchers in Greenland that was conducting a unique experiment: directly measuring a river of meltwater runoff on the top of the ice.

Now, the scientists have published the results of that work. A key finding - that not as much meltwater flows immediately through the ice sheet and drains to the ocean as previously estimated - may have implications for sea-level rise, one of the major effects of climate change.

The scientists say it appears that some of the meltwater is retained in porous ice instead of flowing to the bottom of the ice sheet and out to sea.

"It's always treated as a parking lot, water runs straight off," said Laurence C. Smith, a geographer at the University of California, Los Angeles who led the field work in 2015. "What we found is that it appears there is water retention."

"It's plausible that this is quite an important process, which could render sea-level projections too high," he added.

There's still much that remains unknown about the ice sheet, which at roughly 650,000 square miles is more than twice the size of Texas. The sheet, up to two miles thick, contains enough ice that, if it all melted, would raise oceans around the world by 24 feet. Precisely how the ice melts - half or more by warming on the surface, the rest by ice sheet movement toward the sea, where it melts or calves off as icebergs - can greatly affect how much and how fast the seas rise.

Greenland is currently losing an average of about 260 billion tons of ice per year; at this rate, it would contribute about two inches to sea level rise by the end of the century. This ice loss is estimated through gravity measurements by satellites, but computer models that simulate physical processes are used to estimate the surface runoff. The field study was meant to improve those models by providing on-the-ground data on the flow of meltwater.

The work involved setting up camp near a glacial river that drains meltwater from a surrounding catchment area - in this case about 24 square miles of the ice sheet - into a moulin, a hole that drains to the base of the ice sheet. The researchers suspended a device in the river that uses acoustic signals to gauge the flow, and used satellite and drone images to precisely calculate the catchment area.

The flow data, collected over 72 hours, showed that current models are overestimating the amount of runoff by 20 percent to nearly 60 percent. Were the models wrong? Or were they right about the total amount of melting, but some of the water was not running off?

When he first sent the results to modelers, Dr. Smith said, "they couldn't believe it." After months of back-and-forth, Dr. Smith and his colleagues concluded that the model estimates were accurate, but there was something else going on with some of the meltwater. "What is missing," he said, "is a physical process that is not currently considered by the models - water retention in ice."

Sunlight hitting the ice sheet melts the surface, Dr. Smith said, but some of the light reaches deeper into the ice and causes some melting there. The ice develops a rotted, porous texture -- and can, the findings suggest, hold on to some of the meltwater.

The New York Times | Source: Satellite imagery by DigitalGlobe via Laurence Smith at the University of California, Los Angeles

Marco Tedesco, a co-author of a paper on the work in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences who is a modeler at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of Columbia University, said when comparing models with actual field measurements, "you always look at the energy involved."

"If there's a mismatch between observation and model," Dr. Tedesco said, "that means the model is moving the mass in one way or another and not respecting the way things happen in the real world."

Further work on the ice sheet will try to directly measure how much water is retained in the ice. More direct flow measurements are needed as well, as conditions can vary greatly over the huge icecap. (As the original Times article revealed, gauging stream flow on an ice sheet is far more complicated and dangerous than doing it on land.)

But surface runoff is only one area where much remains to be learned. What happens at the bottom of the ice when meltwater reaches it is understood largely through modeling, and those processes can affect how fast the ice sheet moves - and thus how much ice calves off into the ocean.

Among other aspects that scientists are studying is bioalbedo, which is how the growth of microorganisms in the ice can darken the surface and affect how fast it melts.

Thomas P. Wagner, a program scientist at NASA who directs the agency's efforts to study polar regions, said that studies like Dr. Smith's - and research on the far larger Antarctic ice sheet - are critical to understanding how climate change will affect the globe.

"Sea level rising is 3 millimeters a year right now," Dr. Wagner said. "But in a hundred years, we could have one to five feet of rise."

"Everyday we are improving our understanding of how ice is getting into the ocean," he added. "The overall context is, we're on this."

Note: The image at the top comes from drone photos collected by Jonathan Ryan at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Brown University; and Alun Hubbard at Aberystwyth University in Wales.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
As Greenland Melts, Where's the Water Going?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
On Greenland's vast ice sheet, meltwater flows in rivulets as sunlight and warm air heat the surface ice. Surface variations create thousands of low-lying areas where meltwater collects and eventually drains. The rivulets drain into larger rivers that carve natural paths across the ice sheet.

# data[].attributes.headline
Huge Oil Spill Spreads in East China Sea, Stirring Environmental Fears

# data[].attributes.subject
Huge Oil Spill Spreads in East China Sea, Stirring Environmental Fears

# data[].attributes.body
This article mentions an oil spill that poses a threat to aquatic and avian wild life. 136,000 tons of highly flammable fuel oil spilled into the East China Sea. The oil spill covered 52 square miles, but is now reportedly the size of Paris, France. Strong winds also push the oil into Japanese zones. Aquatic life is in danger due to the oils spreading, and not so much the burning off.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Greenpeace expressed alarm about the threat to the marine ecosystem in the East China Sea, which is one of the world's most heavily trafficked waterways, saying the disaster occurred in "an important spawning ground" for fish.

"At this time of year the area is used as wintering ground by common edible species such as hairtail, yellow croaker, chub mackerel and blue crab," Greenpeace said. "The area is also on the migratory pathway of many marine mammals, such as humpback whale, right whale and gray whale."

The tanker was carrying more than one million barrels of condensate, an extremely light crude oil, to South Korea when it collided with the freighter. When spilled, the condensate can produce a deep underwater plume damaging to marine life.

The Japanese Coast Guard said the fire on the surface of the sea was extinguished early Monday.

"Given the poor condition of the ship after a week of fire and explosions, it is likely that all cargo (and fuel) tanks are breached, and all of this toxic hydrocarbon mixture has now been released into the environment," said Rick Steiner, a marine conservation specialist formerly with the University of Alaska.

"If so, this is the single largest environmental release of petroleum condensate in history," he said.

The Sanchi disaster appears to be the largest tanker spill since 1991, when an unexplained detonation caused the ABT tanker to leak 260,000 tons of oil off the coast of Angola.

Hiroshi Takahashi, a fisheries official in Kagoshima Prefecture in Japan, said the government was "monitoring the direction" of the spill because of fears it "could direct towards Kagoshima."

The deaths of the Iranian crew members on the tanker prompted Iran's government to declare a day of national mourning on Monday to honor "the brave mariners who died in the course of their mission."

Eshaq Jahangiri, Iran's first vice president, said that efforts to recover the bodies of 29 crew members ceased when the tanker sank off the China's coast on Sunday.

Because of the release of toxic gases in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, there was little hope that the crew members survived, but efforts to recover their bodies had continued, Mr. Jahangiri said. "Unfortunately, the ship sank and we could not access their bodies."

Officials still don't know the cause of the collision between the Sanchi and the CF Crystal, a Chinese freighter that was carrying grain.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Huge Oil Spill Spreads in East China Sea, Stirring Environmental Fears

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Greenpeace expressed alarm about the threat to the marine ecosystem in the East China Sea, which is one of the world's most heavily trafficked waterways, saying the disaster occurred in "an important spawning ground" for fish. "At this time of year the area is used as wintering ground by common edible species such as hairtail, yellow croaker, chub mackerel and blue crab," Greenpeace said.

# data[].attributes.headline
City lights setting traps for migrating birds

# data[].attributes.subject
City lights setting traps for migrating birds

# data[].attributes.body
This article explains how city lights can cause danger for birds that migrate. Birds in the United States are nocturnal, and migrate during the night time. Night time equates to low visibility, therefore causing many dangers for night traveling with birds. Birds are attracted to the light, and city lights from big buildings may cause birds to crash into them and die. Other dangers mentioned include birds adaptation to newer LED lights causing struggles for them throughout their migration.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
On their fall migration south in the Northern Hemisphere, scores of birds are being lured by artificial light pollution into urban areas that may be an ecological trap, according to the University of Delaware's Jeff Buler.

Buler, associate professor in UD's Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology, and his research team used 16 weather surveillance radars from the northeastern United States over a seven-year period to map the distributions of migratory birds during their fall stopovers. The research is published in the scientific journal Ecology Letters.

Since most of the birds that migrate in the U.S. are nocturnal and leave their stopover sites at night, Buler and his research group took snapshots of the birds as they departed.

"Shortly after sunset, at around civil twilight, they all take off in these well-synchronized flights that show up as a sudden bloom of reflectivity on the radar," Buler said. "We take a snapshot of that, which allows us to map out where they were on the ground and at what densities. It basically gives us a picture of their distributions on the ground."

The researchers were interested in seeing what factors shape the birds' distributions and why they occur in certain areas.

"We think artificial light might be a mechanism of attraction because we know at a very small scale, birds are attracted to light," Buler said. "Much like insects are drawn to a streetlight at night, birds are also drawn to places like lighthouses. Especially when visibility is poor, you can get these big fall-outs at lighthouses and sports complexes. Stadiums will have birds land in the stadium if it's foggy at night and the lights are on."

One hazard for birds attracted to city lights is death from flying into high buildings. Buler said that some cities such as Toronto have even gone so far as to institute 'Lights Out' programs, turning off the lights in tall buildings to deter birds from colliding with them.

The research team analyzed the distributions of the birds in proximity to the brightest areas in the northeast such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

"These are super-bright, large metropolitan areas," Buler said. "We found an increasing density of birds the closer you get to these cities. The effect goes out about 200 kilometers [about 125 miles]. We estimate that these flying birds can see a city on the horizon up to several hundred kilometers away. Essentially, there is no place in the northeastern United States where they can't see the sky glow of a city."

The researchers also found that suburban areas, such as people's backyards and city parks, such as Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, harbor some of the highest densities of birds in the northeast.

"Fairmount Park has higher densities of birds than at Cape May, New Jersey, which is where birders typically go to see birds concentrating during migration," Buler said.

When they do get lured into cities, the birds seek out suitable habitat, which can cause concerns from a conservation standpoint as lots of birds pack into a small area with limited resources and higher mortality risks.

"One of the things we point out in this paper is that there might be negative consequences for birds being drawn to urban cities. We know there's risk of collision with buildings, collision with vehicles, and getting eaten by cats, which are a major predator," Buler said.

"Domestic cats could be the largest anthropogenic source of mortality for birds. If birds are being drawn into these heavily developed areas, it may be increasing their risk of mortality from anthropogenic sources and it may also be that the resources in those habitats are going to be depleted much faster because of competition with other birds."

Another concern: light pollution created in these cities has been increasing in recent years with the advent of LED lights, which are much brighter than the incandescent lights they replaced.

"The transition of street lighting from incandescent to LED continues to increase the amount of light pollution," Buler said. "If you think about it from an evolutionary sense, for all wildlife really, mammals and insects and birds, they've only been exposed to this light pollution for less than 200 years. They're still adapting to the light."

This research was supported by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
birds; zoology; nature; bird flu research; oil spills; air quality; environmental issues; pollution

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
City lights setting traps for migrating birds: How birds are drawn to artificial light pollution in urban areas

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A new study has examined how light pollution lures birds into urban areas during fall migration, a trend that poses risk for the fowl that often fly into buildings and has increased with the addition of brighter LED lights. The researchers were interested in seeing what factors shape the birds' distributions and why they occur in certain areas.

# data[].attributes.headline
Where Are America’s WintersWarming the Most? In Cold Places

# data[].attributes.subject
Where Are America’s WintersWarming the Most? In Cold Places

# data[].attributes.body
In America, our once cold and brutal winters are starting to become warmer. In particular, this is happening in places between Michigan and Minnesota, places that are known for extremely cold winters. These abnormal patterns are matching up with the most common issue involving temperature: global warming. Locations up north are warming up faster than southern locations, and interior locations are warming up faster than coastal locations are. This poses an economic issue since warmer winters calls for a great decline in industries that rely on snow and cold winters, disruptions to growing seasons, water availability in the west, and even people who suffer from allergens are at risk.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Winter Temperatures Compared to a 20th Century Average

1899-1928

1929-1958

1959-1988

1989-2018

Winters in the United States have gotten warmer in the past 30 years, and some of the coldest parts of the country have warmed up the most.

In Minnesota, winters between 1989 and 2018 were an average of 3 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, compared to a 20th century baseline, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration analyzed by The New York Times. Florida's winters were 1.4 degrees warmer, on average, during that time.

For each 30-year period above, the maps show how much warmer or cooler winters were across the contiguous United States, compared to an average winter for that location during the 20th century. Though it might not always feel like it, warmer winters have become more common across most of the country. The most significant temperature increases can be seen in the Northern Great Plains, a region stretching from Montana to Michigan.

Between 1989 and 2018, Northern Great Plains winters warmed the most. In the Southeast, not so much.

The Northern Great Plains have warmed up particularly quickly in part because of the dry winter conditions typical there, said Kenneth Blumenfeld, a senior climatologist at the Minnesota State Climate Office. Cold air moving into the area from Canada and the Arctic is also not as cold as it used to be, he said.

"In Minnesota, we used to get to negative 30 or negative 40 degrees with certain frequency. But no longer. Maybe we'll now hit negative 30 with the frequency we used to hit negative 40," Dr. Blumenfeld said. But, he added, this difference in cold extremes can be difficult for people to perceive. When it's that cold out, after all, people tend to stay inside.

The pattern of warming shown here is largely consistent with global trends, said Jake Crouch, a scientist at NOAA's climate monitoring branch. "In general, northern latitudes are warming faster than southern latitudes. Interior locations are warming faster than coastal locations."

But there are some distinct regional patterns. In the Southeast, from Louisiana to Alabama and Tennessee, winters saw very little warming between 1989 and 2018, compared to the 20th century average. Scientists have linked this winter "warming hole" to patterns in atmospheric circulation that push colder winter air into the region.

Local trends need to be put in a broader context, Dr. Crouch said. The same weather patterns that contribute to an icy cold East Coast, for example, can also bring warmer than average winters to the West Coast and Europe.

More Winters on the Warm Side of Average

We still experience cold snaps across the country, of course. They might even be getting more frequent for the East Coast because of changes in the polar jet stream, a band of high-altitude wind that divides icy Arctic air from the relatively warmer air of the mid-latitudes. But, overall, outbreaks of cold air tend to be briefer and warmer than in the past, and they come sandwiched between much balmier winter periods.

The annual national data reveals the extent to which warmer winters (a period defined by NOAA as December through February) have become more common over the past 30 years.

How much warmer or cooler each U.S. winter was compared to a 20th century average

Note: Contiguous U.S. only.

Twenty-three of the past 30 winters were warmer than average for the 20th century, while seven were slightly cooler. Eleven winters were more than 3 degrees above average - a benchmark reached only a few times in the previous 90 years.

Milder winters may sound like welcome news to people who dread bundling up, but they don't "come in a vacuum," said Bernadette Woods Placky, a meteorologist at Climate Central. They have ecological and economic consequences, she pointed out, including expanded ranges for pests and allergens, disruption to growing seasons, financial losses for snow-based industries and decreased water availability in the West.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Where Are America's Winters Warming the Most? In Cold Places.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Winter Temperatures Compared to a 20th Century Average 1899-1928 1929-1958 1959-1988 1989-2018 Winters in the United States have gotten warmer in the past 30 years, and some of the coldest parts of the country have warmed up the most.

# data[].attributes.headline
Floods Are Getting Worse, and 2,500Chemical Sites Lie in the Water’s Path

# data[].attributes.subject
Floods Are Getting Worse, and 2,500Chemical Sites Lie in the Water’s Path

# data[].attributes.body
This article discusses the sites that handle extremely dangerous chemicals being in potential flood zones. It's important to note that floods are increasing in the more recent years. There's risk that there could be a toxic spill during a flood, which could further contaminate waters. Flooding will only become more common due to climate change. More than 1,400 of the companies that handle dangerous chemicals are in sites that are at risk of flooding. There aren't any laws that regard flooding and these companies as a unit. The article continues to list multiple sites that believe their location is the "optimal location" for their work. Obama tried to make new regulations stating that companies need to consider where they work and take extra caution about flooding. Trump, however, removed this attempt last year.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Anchored in flood-prone areas in every American state are more than 2,500 sites that handle toxic chemicals, a New York Times analysis of federal floodplain and industrial data shows. About 1,400 are located in areas at highest risk of flooding.

As flood danger grows - the consequence of a warming climate - the risk is that there will be more toxic spills like the one that struck Baytown, Tex., where Hurricane Harvey swamped a chemicals plant, releasing lye. Or like the ones at a Florida fertilizer plant that leaked phosphoric acid and an Ohio refinery that released benzene.

More Than 2,500 Sites That Handle Toxic Chemicals Are Located in Flood-Prone Areas Across the Country.

Flooding nationwide is likely to worsen because of climate change, an exhaustive scientific report by the federal government warned last year. Heavy rainfall is increasing in intensity and frequency.

At the same time, rising sea levels combined with more frequent and extensive flooding from coastal storms like hurricanes may increase the risk to chemical facilities near waterways.

The Times analysis looked at sites listed in the federal Toxic Release Inventory, which covers more than 21,600 facilities across the country that handle large amounts of toxic chemicals harmful to health or the environment.

Of those sites, more than 1,400 were in locations the Federal Emergency Management Agency considers to have a high risk of flooding. An additional 1,100 sites were in areas of moderate risk. Other industrial complexes lie just outside these defined flood-risk zones, obscuring their vulnerability as flood patterns shift and expand.

The presence of chemical sites in areas vulnerable to flooding is a holdover from an age where the advantages to industry of proximity to rivers and oceans - for transportation and trade, or for a ready supply of cooling water - seemingly outweighed the risks.

"Waterfronts are changing as a result of sea level rise," said Jeanne Herb, an environmental policy expert at Rutgers University who has researched hazards posed by climate-related flooding to industries in New Jersey. "More often than not, these are facilities are on the water for a reason," she said. "So how do we make sure that there are protections in place? That's the big question."

Federal law does not explicitly require sites in floodplains that handle toxic chemicals to take extra precautions against flooding. Nor do most states or local governments have such requirements.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order in 2015 requiring planners of federally funded buildings, roads and other infrastructure to account for the impact of possible flooding from rising sea levels or more extreme precipitation. President Trump rescinded those rules last year.

The Times analysis focused on facilities on the federal toxic release database, which tracks sites handling chemicals that could be harmful to health and the environment if released. The list does not include properties like Superfund sites or wastewater facilities, or chemical sites where the predominant risks are fire or explosion, as opposed to toxic pollution.

The Times also examined reports of oil and chemical spills tallied by the National Response Center, which is run by the Coast Guard. Companies are required by law to report spills to the N.R.C., although that database has been criticized as incomplete.

Still, the data does provide a glimpse into the thousands of spills that occur across the country each year.

Texas: Chemical Plant

By the time the murky flood waters had receded from the sprawling Chevron Phillips chemical plant in Baytown, 34,000 pounds of sodium hydroxide and 300 pounds of benzene - both highly toxic - had escaped through a damaged valve. The plant, a joint venture between Chevron and Phillips 66, is one of many that filled the region's streets with a stew of chemicals, debris and waste in the days after Hurricane Harvey and its torrential rains.

Employees later pumped some of the tainted water into 80 steel tanks. But most of the product "was lost in the floodwater," David Gray, an Environmental Protection Agency spokesman based in Dallas, said in an email.

A Chevron Phillips spokesman, Bryce Hallowell, declined to give further details of the spill. He stressed that the plant "was at the center of this incredibly powerful storm."

The chemical site lies in a moderate-risk flood zone, defined by the government as having a 0.2 percent chance of flooding in any year. It was at least the third time in three years that the Chevron Phillips facility blamed heavy downpours for chemical leaks.

The spills underscore the vulnerability of America's coastal industries to rising sea levels and extreme weather. This is the case along the Gulf Coast because the country's oil, gas and petrochemicals industries are concentrated there.

At least 46 facilities reported an estimated 4.6 million pounds of airborne emissions beyond state limits between Aug. 23 and Aug. 30, 2017, the week spanning Harvey's approach and landfall in Texas. The Chevron Phillips plant also reported one of the largest Harvey-related emissions of chemicals into the air.

But even as flooding risks increase, chemical companies continue to build in vulnerable areas. A boom in plastics manufacturing has brought billions of dollars of investment to the Gulf shoreline. The Chevron Phillips site had been in the midst of adding a new $6 billion ethane processor, one of the biggest investments in the Gulf's fast-growing petrochemicals industry.

Despite repeated flooding, the chemicals manufacturer still considered the site, at Cedar Bayou, to be "the optimal location" for its new ethane facility, Mr. Hallowell said. He declined to detail protections that have been considered or installed, or whether they were designed to withstand future floods.

Florida: Fertilizer Plant

When Tropical Storm Debby brought torrential rain to north and central Florida in mid-2012, it triggered a release of phosphoric acid from a chemical plant in White Springs that produces phosphates, which are used to make fertilizer.

Flooding knocked out the power supply to its pumping system, causing water mixed with chemicals to spill into a storm-retention pond, which eventually also overflowed into a creek that feeds the Suwannee River. Released in large quantities into the environment, phosphates and phosphoric acid can cause uncontrolled algae and duckweed growth, causing oxygen levels in lakes and rivers to drop precipitously.

"It was like the biblical flood," said Mike Williams, a spokesman for Nutrien, which runs the phosphates plant in an area dotted with high-risk flood zones, defined by the government as having a 1 percent chance of flooding in any given year. The plant had prepared for the storm by lowering water levels at the ponds, but the flooding was "well off the charts," he said.

Since then, the plant has invested in pumps and backup generators that would allow it to more effectively control excess flood water. Still, "the lesson learned is that every now and then there will be something that's more than we planned for," Mr. Williams said.

Alabama: Plastics Plant

Floods, and the risks they pose to industrial sites, are not confined to the coasts or even to areas the government considers flood-prone.

Record-breaking rains brought flooding to wide swaths of Alabama in May, inundating storage ponds at a Sabic Innovative Plastics plant on the banks of the Alabama River. About 4,500 pounds of sodium hydroxide escaped into a tributary.

The same plant, which is not on land considered flood-prone under federal guidelines, had flooded in 2011, releasing 125 gallons of tetrachloroethylene, according to a cleanup agreement reached with regulators. Tetrachloroethylene is a carcinogen and can affect the nervous system.

Shelia Naab, a Sabic spokeswoman, said the plant had been inundated with "extraordinarily high levels of rain in a very short period of time" and that levels in its ponds had reached unprecedented levels. "We do not believe there was a significant environmental impact as a result of this incident," she said. The plant has since updated a stormwater bypass that stops rainwater from overrunning its storage ponds, she said.

The flooding at Sabic underscores how floodplain designations may be increasingly outdated as rains intensify and weather patterns change.

Heavy rains in northern Ohio in June 2015 inundated Toledo Refining, near the banks of the Maumee River, causing a leak of several million gallons of wastewater from its treatment ponds. The site, run by PBF Energy, one of the country's largest suppliers of transportation fuels and heating oil, also reported a release of benzene.

James Lee, a spokesman for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency, said the leak was not thought to have reached major bodies of water. Toledo Refining did not respond to requests for comment.

"Companies need to think carefully about the risks of flood, and the increased risks from climate change," said Tom Neltner, chemicals policy director at the Environmental Defense Fund. "Saying 'We've always done it this way' doesn't work anymore."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Floods Are Getting Worse, and 2,500 Chemical Sites Lie in the Water's Path

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Anchored in flood-prone areas in every American state are more than 2,500 sites that handle toxic chemicals, a New York Times analysis of federal floodplain and industrial data shows. About 1,400 are located in areas at highest risk of flooding.

# data[].attributes.headline
Daylight Saving Time Isn’t Saving Much Energy

# data[].attributes.subject
Daylight Saving Time Isn’t Saving Much Energy

# data[].attributes.body
This article (obviously) talks about daylight savings. Daylight savings was originally made to save candle burning time by Benjamin Franklin so that people could have more day time light and not have to burn so many candles back when there was no such thing as electricity. It was also used as a way to conserve energy once electricity was a thing, and senators have claimed that it saves the country millions of dollars in gas. Recent research however quickly debunks this thought of saving energy using daylight savings, since we don't use light as much as we use other electrical appliances like cooling systems, computer charging, and other electricity consuming objects in households alone. And we obviously don't need it for conserving candle wax anymore... so why is it still around?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Welcome to the Climate Fwd: newsletter. The New York Times climate team emails readers once a week with stories and insights about climate change. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
This week, we're looking at daylight saving time (not "savings," officially), why we keep building homes in wildfire-prone areas, and the status of climate lawsuits.

Does daylight saving time work?

If you were in the United States or Canada this past Sunday, you lost one hour. Alas, you won't get it back until 2 a.m. on Nov. 4, but for now you can enjoy more evening light. Many other countries are preparing to shift to daylight saving time or summer time in the coming weeks.

Benjamin Franklin is often credited with first proposing a version of daylight time (in jest) as a way to save candles. The practice of pushing clocks forward to make more use of daylight hours during the warmer months was adopted as part of a global effort to conserve energy during World War I. In 1918, one senator claimed that it saved the United States $2 million in gas bills.

But does daylight time still save energy? Not really, according to most research on the subject. Lighting has become a smaller part of overall energy consumption, and extending the use of daylight hours encourages people to use more air conditioning and heating.

A 2017 analysis of 44 different papers on the subject found that, on average, the policy helped save 0.34 percent of electricity use. Places farther from the Equator (with mild summers and lower cooling demands) might save energy, but places closer to the Equator used more energy during daylight time, the researchers found.

"The policy makes some sense in Scandinavia, but not in Spain," Tomas Havranek, an associate professor in energy economics at Charles University in Prague who led the study, wrote in an email. Even in Scandinavia, Dr. Havranek noted, the savings would be moderate.

What's more, when daylight time begins in spring, people are often waking up during "the coldest, darkest part of the day," and turning up heat to stay warm, said Matthew Kotchen, a professor of economics at Yale who led a 2008 study on the effectiveness of the policy in Indiana. During long evening hours in the summer, Dr. Kotchen added, people tended to "crank up the A.C.," leading to overall higher energy use.

He and his colleagues found that turning clocks forward increased residential electricity demand, costing households in Indiana an extra $9 million a year and increasing emissions. "The way people use energy now is different from when daylight saving came about," he said.

Energy consumption is not the only thing to take into account when considering whether we should continue turning the hands of time, Dr. Havranek noted. Other studies cite increased traffic accidents and even heart attacks.

But Dr. Kotchen said there were positive benefits, too: more outdoor leisure time, and possibly more retail spending, during post-work daylight hours. Last week, in Florida, lawmakers signed a bill that attempts to protect the extra evening sunshine all year round.

"Everyone loves daylight savings," Dr. Kotchen said.

Housing markets on fire

After deadly wildfires rampaged through California last year, destroying thousands of homes, climate scientists warned that it was only a preview of the dangers that a hotter world will bring.

But if you look at housing markets around the United States, the warning doesn't appear to have sunk in. Even as climate change increases the risk of large, destructive wildfires, we keep building in the most flammable parts of the country.

In a study published this week, scientists looked at what's called the "wildland urban interface" - the parts of the United States where homes are built right at the edge of wilderness, surrounded by trees and shrubs. When wildfires break out, these are the places where people and buildings are most at risk.

They're also increasingly popular places to live. There are now more than 43.4 million houses in these boundary areas, up from 30.8 million in 1990. "The growth has just been staggering," said Volker C. Radeloff, a professor of forest ecology at the University of Wisconsin and lead author of the study.

Call it a case of misaligned incentives. Homeowners and local governments have plenty of reasons to push deeper into the wilderness: these are beautiful places to live, and communities reap the tax revenue from new development. And if a fire doesbreak out, it's usually the state and federal governments that pick up the tab.

"This is not a story about how people are stupid, most people understand the fire risk quite well," said Dr. Radeloff. "But as long as the costs of firefighting are borne by the federal government or the state, it makes a lot of sense to live in these areas."

As more people move in, that increases the odds that fires will start in the first place, from a carelessly tossed cigarette or a downed power line. (Most wildfires in the United States are caused by people, not lightning strikes.) Then, when wildfires do spread, having so many houses at the forest's edge makes fighting those fires even harder.

There's another problem: In recent years, many experts have argued in favor of letting smaller wildfires burn through forests periodically in order to prevent a buildup of vegetation that helps fuel the biggest and most destructive blazes. But doing so becomes nearly impossible when there are so many houses in the vicinity of those forests.
Why aren't there climate damage lawsuits like the tobacco litigation?
The study calls for rethinking everything from fire-prevention strategies to zoning rules to help limit wildfire risk. You'd think policymakers would be eager to listen after last year's record-breaking wildfire season, which cost federal taxpayers some $2 billion in firefighting costs alone.

But there's little indication that big changes are on the horizon. In Bloomberg Businessweek, Christopher Flavelle wrote an eye-opening article about how California is rushing to rebuild destroyed homes exactly where they were. One telling detail: "State officials have proposed shielding people in fire-prone areas from increased insurance premiums - potentially at the expense of homeowners elsewhere in California - in an effort to encourage them to remain in areas certain to burn again."

Your questions: Where are the climate lawsuits?

Do you have questions about climate change? We're answering them in this newsletter. Send us yours via the form at the bottom of our climate Q. and A. Brigid Shea from Austin, Tex., asks:

A number of climate lawsuits and investigations are going on, both in the United States and around the world, though you might not have heard of all of them.

Some have parallels to the tobacco litigation of the 1990s that led to a multibillion-dollar settlement with states. The state suits claimed that the tobacco industry lied about the dangers of smoking and was responsible for billions of dollars in increased Medicaid costs. (A separate 2006 federal court decision found that the tobacco companies' campaign of deception violated racketeering laws.)

Cities and counties have now filed lawsuits against fossil fuel companies arguing along similar lines that the industry is contributing to the effects of climate change and that government entities are having to pay the costs - including those of dealing with sea level rise, drought and other weather extremes.

Most of the lawsuits originate in blue states along the coasts. The first were filed by Marin and San Mateo Counties and the City of Imperial Beach, all in California. Others have followed, including suits from San Francisco and Oakland and one filed in January by New York City.
We'd love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email thoughts and suggestions to If you like what we're doing, please spread the word and send this to your friends. You can And be sure to check out our full assortment of free newsletters from The Times. sign up here to get our newsletter delivered to your inbox each week. climateteam@nytimes.com.
In the lawsuit brought by San Francisco and Oakland, a federal judge has ordered a four-hour tutorial session on climate change, presented by both the plaintiffs and the industry. (Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, has already done a pretty good job of answering the judge's questions on Twitter.)

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California says he will get into the act, as well, announcing this week that he is planning a suit against oil companies for "first-degree murder." He was vague on the details of such a suit or when he might file it, however.

Several state attorneys general, including Eric T. Schneiderman of New York and Maura Healey of Massachusetts, are investigating Exxon Mobil's statements on climate change for possible charges of shareholder fraud. Those efforts have been vehemently opposed by the company.

And a group of young plaintiffs is suing the United States government, demanding that it do more to fight climate change. The suit, first filed during the Obama administration, has gained even more importance for activists during the Trump administration. This administration filed an unusual request with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit asking the court to stop the case. The three-judge panel refused, and the case could begin in Eugene, Ore., before the end of the year.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Daylight Saving Time Isn't Saving Much Energy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Welcome to the Climate Fwd: newsletter. The New York Times climate team emails readers once a week with stories and insights about climate change. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. This week, we're looking at daylight saving time (not "savings," officially), why we keep building homes in wildfire-prone areas, and the status of climate lawsuits.

# data[].attributes.headline
Removing heavy metals from water in a matter of seconds

# data[].attributes.subject
Removing heavy metals from water in a matter of seconds

# data[].attributes.body
This article is about drinking water. There are many people around the world who do not have access to clean drinking water. Another problem is that within water heavy metal pollution is what makes the water "dirty" as the world's need for more heavy metals for energy increases rapidly. A PhD student however have now found a solution to "pulling" out these dangerous metals. When the cleaned waters were tested with other toxic waters, results showed that they can indeed remove lead contents within water by 2 parts per billion, which makes the water drinkable by U.S. law. It can also be regenerated easily, making it very sustainable. After this discovery, they are trying to further research about ways to clean up polluted water and air.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
According to the World Health Organization almost 1 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water, and that number is expected to increase with climate change. Meanwhile, our endlessly rising energy needs and use of heavy metals in industrial processes have maximized our exposure to toxic materials in water.

Current commercial methods to remove heavy metals including lead from municipal drinking water tend to be costly and energy-consuming, without being sufficiently efficient. Less conventional approaches might be more efficient, but are single-use, difficult to regenerate, or produce significant toxic waste as a side-product.

Now, the lab of Professor Wendy Lee Queen at EPFL, with colleagues at the University of California Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have found a solution using metal organic frameworks (MOFs), which are materials made up of metal nodes interlinked by organic chemical 'struts'. Their unprecedented internal surface areas and easy chemical tunability allow MOFs to "pull" water vapor and other gases from air. These same features make them promising materials also for selectively removing heavy metals from water.

A PhD student at EPFL-Valais, Daniel T. Sun, has designed a water-stable MOF/polymer composite using cheap, environmentally and biologically friendly materials. The scientists treated a MOF, known as Fe-BTC, with dopamine, which polymerized to polydopamine (PDA) pinning the polymer inside the MOF. The final composite, named Fe-BTC/PDA, can quickly and selectively remove high amounts of heavy metals like lead and mercury from real-world water samples. In fact, it can remove over 1.6 times its own weight of mercury and 0.4 times of its weight of lead.

Fe-BTC/PDA was then tested in solutions as toxic as some of the worst water samples found in Flint, Michigan. The tests showed that the MOF can, in a matter of seconds, reduce lead concentrations to 2 parts per billion, a level that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization deem drinkable.

The scientists also removed lead from various real-world water samples obtained from the Rhone River, the Mediterranean Sea, and a wastewater treatment plant in Switzerland. They also showed how the material could be regenerated easily.

There are multiple sources of exposure to toxic heavy metals. For example, lead is used in paint, ceramic glazes, jewelry, toys, and pipes. Considering this, the approach with the new MOF shows much promise for solving current limitations of water-cleaning systems. The authors of the study are now testing other new specially designed MOFs to remove other types of trace contaminants in water and air.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
health policy; pharmacology; diseases and conditions; nature of water; nuclear energy; chemistry; water; pollution; environmental issues

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Removing heavy metals from water in a matter of seconds

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
According to the World Health Organization almost 1 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water, and that number is expected to increase with climate change. Meanwhile, our endlessly rising energy needs and use of heavy metals in industrial processes have maximized our exposure to toxic materials in water.

# data[].attributes.headline
Growing need for urban forests as urban land expands

# data[].attributes.subject
Growing need for urban forests as urban land expands

# data[].attributes.body
This article is about urban land. As more urban land becomes common throughout the country, there is a growing need for forests within them. Urban forests are key for ensuring human well-being and environmental health. Studies have shown that urban land is rapidly increasing, and will only continue to do this as time goes on. According to researchers, urban forests give off healthy benefits such as less air pollution which avoids the problem of respiratory issues, and helping with climate change and energy use. It is estimated that about 5.5 billion trees are included in urban forests and make up to $18 billion in societal benefits. States like New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Delaware are the ones that have the largest amount of urban land, as they have large populations with small amounts of land making the urban forests very beneficial to them.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A new USDA Forest Service study projects that urban land in Lower 48 states will more than double between 2010 and 2060, which will affect forest and agricultural lands that are being converted to urban uses as well as expand the importance of urban forests in relation to environmental quality and human well-being.

A USDA Forest Service study published in the Journal of Forestry, "U.S. Urban Forest Statistics, Values and Projections," estimates change in urban land on a national level and state-by-state, and also updates data on the value of the nation's urban forests.

Urban land increased from 2.6 percent (58 million acres) in 2000 to 3 percent (68 million acres) in 2010; states with the greatest amount of urban growth were in the South/Southeast (Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and South Carolina). Researchers anticipate that between 2010 and 2060, urban land will increase 95.5 million acres to 163 million acres (8.6 percent), an area roughly the size of Montana. Eighteen states are projected to have an increase of over 2 million acres of urban land.

In addition to assessing change in urban areas, lead author David Nowak of the USDA Forest Service's Forest Inventory and Analysis Program also updated previous estimates of the size of the nation's urban forests, which contribute to the health of urban populations by producing billions of dollars in annual benefits associated with air quality, climate change and reduced energy use. In previous research, Nowak has found that the health impacts of urban forests across the nation include the avoidance of 670 incidents of human mortality and 575,000 incidents of acute respiratory symptoms, among other health impacts.

Nationally, U.S. urban forests contain an estimated 5.5 billion trees (39.4 percent tree cover) that produce at least $18 billion in benefits to society.

"Urbanization and urban forests are likely to be one the most important forest influences and influential forests of the 21st Century," said Nowak. "A healthy and well-managed urban forest can help reduce some of the environmental issues associated with urbanization such as increased air temperatures and energy use, reduced air and water quality, and increased human stress, and ultimately help people living within and around urban areas."

States with the greatest percent urban land are all along the northeastern Atlantic coast, with large populations and relatively small state area: New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Delaware. The impact of current urban forests is likely greatest in these areas due to the relatively large proportion of urban land.

In each of the states with the greatest amount of projected urban land growth (California, Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Pennsylvania), the increase in urban land over the 50-year period is greater than the land area of Connecticut (3 million acres).

"Research by the USDA Forest Service is informing cities and communities as they make decisions about managing urban forests," said Tony Ferguson, Director of the USDA Forest Service's Northern Research Station and the Forest Products Laboratory. "By measuring and monitoring urban forests, society can better understand the value urban forests deliver, and how urban forests and their role in reducing pollution and reducing energy costs changes over time."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
trees; soil types; nature; forest; sustainability; environmental science; urbanization; land management; disaster plan

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Growing need for urban forests as urban land expands

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A new USDA Forest Service study projects that urban land in Lower 48 states will more than double between 2010 and 2060, which will affect forest and agricultural lands that are being converted to urban uses as well as expand the importance of urban forests in relation to environmental quality and human well-being.

# data[].attributes.headline
Eastern Mediterranean summer will be two months longer by end of 21st century

# data[].attributes.subject
Eastern Mediterranean summer will be two months longer by end of 21st century

# data[].attributes.body
This article is about the area that makes up Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and southern Turkey. Due to massive climate changes, regional ecosystems and human health are going to be impacted most likely in a negative way, in particular, impacting the duration of winter and summer. Summer will extend by two months, while winter will be decreased by 2 months. This makes summer last for 6 months and winter last for 2 months. Global warming is caused by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that makes the earth warmer, eventually causing warm seasons to be longer and cold seasons to become shorter. his poses not only dangerous economic issues such as loss of cold weather dependent industries, but also creates a water issue as dry seasons will be longer and rainy seasons will be shorter.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The eastern Mediterranean -- an area that covers Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and southern Turkey -- is experiencing monumental climate changes poised to significantly affect regional ecosystems and human health. According to a new Tel Aviv University study, these changes will alter the duration of summer and winter in the region by the end of this century.

The summer, a dry and hot period of four months, will last for about six months by 2100; the winter, the region's rainy season, will accordingly shorten from four to just two months.

"Our research shows that the climate changes we are all noticing today are likely to intensify in the coming decades," says Assaf Hochman of TAU's School of Geosciences, who led the research. "It is very important to understand this to try to prevent the deterioration as much as possible, or at least prepare for the change."

The study was overseen by Prof. Pinhas Alpert and conducted by Hochman, Dr. Tzvi Harpaz and Prof. Hadas Saaroni, all of TAU's School of Geosciences. It was published in the International Journal of Climatology.
The culprit: Greenhouse gases
The research is based on global climate models and points to an expected rise in greenhouse gases as the chief factor responsible for the seasonal changes.

"These projected changes will significantly influence our lives by shrinking and degrading the quality of our water resources, increasing the risk of brushfires, worsening pollution and altering the timing and intensity of seasonal illnesses and other health hazards," Hochman says.

"One of the main causes of these changes is the growing concentration of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere as a result of human activity. We have sought to examine what is expected in the 21st century as a direct result of the greenhouse effect on the climate."
Major consequences foreseen
The scientists used an algorithm developed by Prof. Alpert to approach global climate models taken from the World Climate Data Center. They did so to examine the impact of human behavior on climate in the region.

"The conclusions were disturbing. Pending no significant change in current human behavior in the region, the summer is expected to extend by 25% by the middle of the century (2046-2065) and by 49% until its end (2081-2100)," Hochman concludes. "The combination of a shorter rainy season and a longer dry season may cause a major water problem in Israel and neighboring countries."

The research team is currently engaged in the possible establishment of a multidisciplinary regional center for climate adaptation to minimize the effects of climate changes on the region.

Journal Reference:

Assaf Hochman, Tzvi Harpaz, Hadas Saaroni, Pinhas Alpert. The seasons' length in 21st century CMIP5 projections over the eastern Mediterranean. International Journal of Climatology, 2018; DOI: 10.1002/joc.5448

Cite This Page:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
global warming; environmental issues; climate; environmental awareness; environmental policy; weather; geoengineering; ice ages

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Eastern Mediterranean summer will be two months longer by end of 21st century: Climate changes will cut winter in the region by half, researchers say

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The eastern Mediterranean is experiencing monumental climate changes poised to significantly affect regional ecosystems and human health. According to a new study, these changes will drastically alter the duration of summer and winter in the region by the end of this century.