Earthweek: Diary of a Changing World
Week ending Friday, July 21, 2023
Coral Stress
Marine scientists say the record ocean heat in the Florida Keys this summer is the latest environmental challenge threatening the region’s famed coral reefs.
The waters have been far hotter than the 73-83 degrees Fahrenheit more common during July, which could cause native coral to bleach.
Researchers have been cultivating in nurseries more hearty coral that can withstand the heat and other stresses, and then planting them around the Keys.
“They have withstood, over a five-year period, two coral bleaching events, a Category-4 hurricane that went right over the top of it and stony coral tissue loss disease,” researcher Allyson DeMerlis of the University of Miami told Reuters.
Earthquakes
A tsunami advisory was briefly issued after a sharp temblor struck off the Alaska Peninsula.
• Earth movements were also felt in far southern Mexico, in Central America from Nicaragua to Guatemala and along the central ArgentinaChile border.
‘Existential Threat’
The U.N. weather agency warns that the deadly heat baking many parts of the Northern Hemisphere this summer is the new normal.
“The extreme weather is having a major impact on human health, ecosystems, economies, agriculture, energy and water supplies,” said World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.
The World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe, Hans Henri P. Kluge, amplified the warnings, saying, “There is a desperate and urgent need … to effectively tackle the climate crisis, which poses an existential threat to the human race.”
Meanwhile, global crude oil consumption, and the resulting climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions it will generate, are expected to reach record highs this year.
Alaska Eruption
Alaska’s Shishaldin Volcano spewed ash high above the Aleutian Islands, about 680 miles southwest of Anchorage.
Lava was seen streaming down the volcano’s cylindrical slopes.
The U.S. National Weather Service issued an in-flight weather advisory due to the danger the ash posed to jet aircraft flying above the North Pacific.
The roughly 40 nearby residents of False Pass on Unimak Island were not considered to be threatened by the eruption.
Insect Pollution
New research finds that air pollution may play a major role in the dramatic drop in global insect numbers seen this century.
Scientists from Australia, China and California report that an insect’s ability to find food and mate is reduced when their antennae are contaminated by tiny particles from various pollution sources.
Writing in the journal Nature Communications, they say scanning electron microscope images has revealed that as air pollution increases, more of those tiny particles collect on the sensitive antennae of insects, reducing their capacity to detect odors.
Color Shift
Scientists say a “significant” change in the ocean’s color over the past 20 years is likely due to climate change and cannot be explained by natural, year-to-year variations.
A team from MIT, the U.K.’s National Oceanography Center and other institutions says that while the color shifts may be subtle to the human eye, they have occurred over 56% of the world’s ocean areas.
The researchers found that most regions have become steadily greener over the period, but they cannot explain exactly how the shift is occurring.
Likely causes are the changes the warming planet is bringing to marine ecosystems, especially in plankton populations.
Tropical Cyclones
Typhoon Talim uprooted trees as it roared ashore in southern China’s Guangdong province.
• Remnants of former Hurricane Calvin skirted the southern Hawaiian islands with gales and heavy rain.
• Tropical Storm Don spun up in the middle of the North Atlantic.