Earthweek: Diary of a Changing World
Week ending Friday, March 15, 2024
Methane Leaks
Emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane from the energy industry remained near a record high during 2023 despite pledges from the sector to fix its leaking infrastructure.
The gas is responsible for about a third of global heating since preindustrial times, and the International Energy Agency says the oil and gas industry inadvertently allowed more than 120 million metric tons of it to leak into the atmosphere during 2023, up slightly from 2022.
The agency believes new methane-detecting satellites with high-resolution imagery will help pinpoint more of the leaks, which are said to be significantly underestimated by the industry.
Earthquakes
A magnitude 5.4 temblor caused scattered damage when it hit Montenegro and neighboring western Balkans countries.
• Earth movements were also felt in the New South Wales, the far southern Philippines, Taiwan, east-central Japan, eastern Afghanistan, South Carolina and coastal San Diego County.
Storm Deaths
Intense winter storms this year have caused hundreds of starving guillemot seabirds to fall dead onto France’s Atlantic beaches.
Environmental advocates say the rough conditions had prevented about 500 of the birds from feeding, leaving them exhausted before falling to the beaches and dying.
A member of Sea Shepherd France says such deaths happen regularly each winter, but not on the scale of recent weeks.
“Climate change is an indirect cause as it increases the frequency and intensity of storms, particularly winter storms, which are the main reason for massive strandings of seabirds,” said French National Center for Scientific Research scientist Jerome Fort.
Jackal Arrival
The first live golden jackal ever to be seen in Spain was photographed on Feb. 24 by an automatic camera along the Ebro River.
Canis aureus is native to Asia, but it has expanded westward across Europe during the past decade, now finally reaching Spain.
A dead jackal was found on a highway in Álva during January 2023, indicating that the species had only recently arrived in Spain.
“For now, we cannot say if it is good or bad news. But yes, it is something very important to evaluate,” said José Garcia of the Spanish Society for the Conservation and Study of Mammals.
Salmon Die-offs
Warming ocean waters due to climate change appear to be a significant factor behind an increasing number of largescale die-offs of farmed salmon. But disease outbreaks have also been well documented as the cause of numerous deaths.
With the die-offs becoming more frequent and larger in scale, the controversial salmon farms are now under renewed scrutiny.
“They (salmon) are plagued by sea lice and disease, suffer from stressful handling and treatments, and live a monotonous life in barren, crowded cages,” said OneKind spokeswoman Kirsty Jenkins.
Reef Bleaching
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral system, is now suffering its fifth mass coral bleaching event in only the last eight years.
Scientists say the “devastating” trauma to the reef is due to a combination of global heating and the now-waning El Niño ocean warming across the Pacific.
Marine experts say the reef began to show signs of renewed bleaching in early February.
The first mass bleaching of the reef occurred in 1998 and was followed by others in 2002, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022 and now in 2024.
NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program says the planet is on the cusp of a fourth global mass coral bleaching event, affecting reefs in the Pacific and Atlantic, and potentially the Indian Ocean.
African Cyclone
Tropical Storm Filipo brought muchneeded rainfall to southern Mozambique after forming over the Mozambique Channel.