Earthweek: a diary of the planet

For the week ending Friday, Oct. 14.

Unbearably hot

The climate crisis is likely to make many global regions so hot within decades that they will become uninhabitable, according to a report from the U.N. and the Red Cross. This year’s deadly heat in South Asia and Somalia are only previews of what the report warns are likely to become regular occurrences. “There are also likely to be levels of extreme heat beyond which societies may find it practically impossible to deliver effective adaptation for all,” the report says. The regions most threatened are sub-Saharan Africa and the Horn of Africa, as well as southern and southwestern Asia.

Grounded

Tree-dwelling monkeys have been observed spending more time on the forest floor to escape rising temperatures caused by global heating and deforestation. A team of researchers says the thermal threat is in addition to habitat loss and other factors threatening the survival of many primates. It studied 47 tree-dwelling monkeys at nearly 70 different sites in Madagascar and the Americas. “In most tropical countries where these species live, humans log the forest,” said Giuseppe Donati of Britain’s Oxford Brookes University. “This creates gaps, and it opens the canopy of the forest. That causes an increase in temperature.”

Eruption

Italy’s Stromboli volcano spewed plumes of ash and fountains of lava during several explosions off the coast of northern Sicily. One of the blasts caused part of the crater rim to collapse, letting lava flow into the Tyrrhenian Sea.

‘Sea’ batteries

A new type of electric battery containing material harvested from seaweed could someday ease the planet’s reliance on mining lithium for energy storage. The new type of sodium-metal battery still works after being charged 1,000 times. The use of material from seaweed prevents the buildup on electrodes that stood in the way of switching to batteries that use sodium instead of lithium. Sodium can easily be harvested from seawater, researchers say.

Methane surge

A flurry of blasts in late September on undersea gas pipelines connecting Russia to Germany are believed to have caused history’s single largest release of methane into the atmosphere. An expedition rushed to the Nord Stream leaks by Sweden found that methane levels in the Baltic Sea there were about 1,000 times higher than normal. Methane is a much more powerful, but more short-lived, contributor to global heating than carbon dioxide. It can dissolve in water, but when it reaches the surface, methane transforms back into a gas and is absorbed by the atmosphere. The Kremlin has dismissed accusations that it wrecked the pipelines.