Coastal Restoration

In the not-too-distant future, disasters won't come one at a time. Instead, according to new research, we can expect a cascade of catastrophes, some gradual, others abrupt, all compounding as climate change takes a greater toll.

"Facing these climatic changes will be like getting into a fight with Mike Tyson, Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Jackie Chan — all at the same time." That is how Camillo Mora, the lead author of the study released Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, describes the numerous impacts that are expected to hit us in the coming years. He adds, "I think we are way above our heads."

In total, the researchers identified 467 distinct ways in which society is already being impacted by increasing climate extremes, and then laid out how these threats are likely to compound on top of each other in the decades ahead. If something isn't done to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they say that instead of dealing with a single major hazard at a time, people worldwide could be forced to cope with three to six at once.

To reach that conclusion, the team of 23 scientists reviewed more than 3,000 scientific peer-reviewed scientific papers. They examined the impact on human health, food supplies, water, the economy, infrastructure, and security from multiple factors including rising temperatures, drought, heat waves, wildfires, precipitation, floods, powerful storms, sea level rise and changes in land cover and ocean chemistry.

The University of Hawaii at Manoa, where several of the scientists are based, called the work "one of the most comprehensive assessments yet of how humanity is being impacted by the simultaneous occurrence of multiple climate hazards strengthened by increasing greenhouse gas emissions."

While most studies focus on one or two threats from climate change, this paper aggregates the impacts and shows how the threats are not isolated, but rather compound on top of each other.  "If we only consider the most direct threats from climate change, for example heat waves or severe storms, we inevitably will be blindsided by even larger threats that, in combination, can have even broader societal impacts." says co-author Jonathan Patz, professor and director of the University of Wisconsin's Global Health Institute.

According to Mora, "The notion of these hazards happening simultaneously is not something far into the future, this is already here and can happen any time from now on."

Danish offshore support vessel operator Maersk Supply Service will continue providing marine support to The Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit engineering and environmental organization working to rid oceans of plastic pollution.

The Ocean Cleanup’s mission is to develop advanced technologies to rid the world’s oceans of plastic. To achieve this goal, the company's aim to stop the inflow via rivers and clean up what has already accumulated in the ocean. Its ultimate goal is reaching a 90% reduction of floating ocean plastic by 2040.

Most estimates of global mean sea-level rise this century fall below 2 m (7 ft). This quantity is comparable to the positive vertical bias of the principle digital elevation model (DEM) used to assess global and national population exposures to extreme coastal water levels, NASA’s SRTM. CoastalDEM is a new DEM utilizing neural networks to reduce SRTM error.

Scientists now show – employing CoastalDEM—that 190 M people (150–250 M, 90% CI) currently occupy global land below projected high tide lines for 2100 under low carbon emissions, up from 110 M today, for a median increase of 80 M. These figures triple SRTM-based values. Under high emissions, CoastalDEM indicates up to 630 M people live on land below projected annual flood levels for 2100, and up to 340 M for mid-century, versus roughly 250 M at present. We estimate one billion people now occupy land less than 10 m above current high tide lines, including 250 M below 1 m.

As fecal waste and bacteria flow from hog lagoons into the water supply, North Carolina is revisiting a contentious battle between the pork industry, health experts and environmentalists.

In regions where hog farm density is high, there is an overall poor sanitary quality of surface waters. The presence of mass-scale swine and poultry lots and processing plants in a sandy floodplain – a region once dotted by small tobacco farms – has long posed a difficult dilemma for a state where swine and poultry represent billions of dollars a year for the economy. [Past] hurricane’s environmental impact in North Carolina were so severe in part because of the large number of hog lagoon breaches. Following Hurricane Matthew, the department has counted 10 to 12 lagoons that were inundated, with floodwaters topping the berms and spreading diluted waste.

Tags: food, agriculture, agribusiness, unit 5 agriculture, agricultural environment, environment, environment modify, pollution. 

Climate Change

A new study, published in the scientific journal Nature, suggests a lesser-known greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, is being emitted into the atmosphere at an increasing rate.



Credit Global News

Scientists led by the USF College of Marine Science used NASA satellite observations to discover the largest bloom of macroalgae in the world called the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt (GASB), as reported in Science.

They confirmed that the belt of brown macroalgae called Sargassum forms its shape in response to ocean currents, based on numerical simulations. It can grow so large that it blankets the surface of the tropical Atlantic Ocean from the west coast of Africa to the Gulf of Mexico. This happened last year when more than 20 million tons of it—heavier than 200 fully loaded aircraft carriers—floated in surface waters and some of which wreaked havoc on shorelines lining the tropical Atlantic, Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and east coast of Florida.

The team also used environmental and field data to suggest that the belt forms seasonally in response to two key nutrient inputs: one human-derived, and one natural. In the spring and summer, Amazon River discharge adds nutrients to the ocean, and such discharged nutrients may have increased in recent years due to increased deforestation and fertilizer use. In the winter, upwelling off the West African coast delivers nutrients from deep waters to the ocean surface where the Sargassum grows.

"The evidence for nutrient enrichment is preliminary and based on limited field data and other environmental data, and we need more research to confirm this hypothesis," said Dr. Chuanmin Hu of the USF College of Marine Science, who led the study and has studied Sargassum using satellites since 2006. "On the other hand, based on the last 20 years of data, I can say that the belt is very likely to be a new normal," said Hu.

Mexican president declares protected status for environmentally rich islands off the coast of Baja California peninsula