San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Major U.S. cities sinking at alarming rate
DIARY OF A CHANGING WORLD Week ending Friday, March 8, 2024
Sinking Cities
A new analysis of satellite images and GPS sensors shows that major cities along the U.S. East Coast are sinking at an alarming rate, amplifying the dangers posed by rising sea levels.
A NASA-funded team of scientists at Virginia Tech says the subsidence is happening rapidly enough to threaten infrastructure, farmland and wetlands.
It is being caused by factors ranging from the extraction of groundwater to dams and the weight of other human construction.
One of the fastest-sinking cities is Charleston, South Carolina, which experienced 0.157 inches of subsidence per year between 2007 and 2020.
Charleston has suffered a sharp increase in tidal flooding during recent decades.
Earthquakes
A powerful tremor along the border of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan broke windows and cracked walls but did not cause any injuries or significant damage.
• Earth movements were also felt in far northern India, southern Iran, far western Turkey as well as in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
El Niño Heat
The El Niño ocean warming in the tropical Pacific is likely to bring a second consecutive year of record global heat despite predictions of the phenomenon waning over the next few months.
A new analysis by the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences finds there is a 90% chance that global temperatures will set a new record high this year.
“This impending warmth heightens the risk of yearround marine heat waves and escalates the threat of wildfires and other negative consequences in Alaska and the Amazon Basin,” said lead researcher Ning Jiang.
Areas expected to experience unprecedented heat stretch across the Americas, Europe, China, the Philippines and the Caribbean.
Soundscape Noise
A new study highlights how noises made by ocean shipping are drowning out the songs baleen whales make to communicate.
This is a particular problem at mating sites, where the noise pollution can disrupt reproduction at certain times of the year.
Writing in the journal Nature, scientists say baleens have evolved with a unique U-shaped structure instead of vocal cords that lets them create low-frequency songs that can travel across long distances through water.
But those songs have frequencies of up to 300 Hz, which are within the range of noise made by ships.
Emissions Record
Greenhouse gas emissions from power generation hit a record high in 2023, to a large extent due to the increased use of fossil fuel in regions where drought curbed hydroelectric power.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that those emissions rose by 1.1% last year.
“Without this (drought) effect, emissions from the global electricity sector would have fallen in 2023,” the IEA report said. Emissions fell by 4.1% in the U.S. and by 9% in Europe, but China saw a rise of 5.2%.
Climate Breach
Earth’s average temperature was 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) warmer than in preindustrial times across an entire year for the first time on record, according to a new European climate report.
The Copernicus Climate Change Service says the period from February 2023 to January 2024 reached 1.52 degrees of warming.
This exceeded the aspirational goal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees as outlined in the landmark Paris climate agreement.
Experts say this first yearlong breach doesn’t mean the world has permanently exceeded that amount of warming, but it does show we are closer to doing so.
Eruptions
Iceland’s Blue Lagoon was briefly evacuated after a swarm of tremors indicated a fresh eruption was about to occur. Volcanologists say that another eruption could occur on the island’s restive Reykjanes Peninsula with only 30 minutes’ warning.
• Ecuador’s La Cumbre volcano spewed lava and ash over an uninhabited island in the Galapagos archipelago.