It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Chemical changes in the oceans more than 800 million years ago almost destroyed the oxygen-rich atmosphere that paved the way for complex life on Earth, new research suggests.
Then, as now, the planet had an "oxidizing" atmosphere, driven by phytoplankton—the "plants" of the ocean—releasing oxygen during photosynthesis.
However, new research from an international team including the University of Exeter and spanning Toulouse, Leeds, London and Nanjing, suggests ocean changes in the early Neoproterozoic era (from one billion to 800 million years ago) may have locked away phosphorus—a vital nutrient for life—limiting phytoplankton growth and oxygen release.
The study suggests the amount of phosphorus available remained "just sufficient" to support the oxidising atmosphere—preventing a return to the "reducing" (oxygen-poor) atmosphere that existed over a billion years earlier.
"Ocean chemistry in this period changed to become 'ferruginous' (rich in iron)," said Dr. Romain Guilbaud, of CNRS (Toulouse).
"We know ocean chemistry affects the cycle of phosphorus, but the impact on phosphorus availability at this time hadn't been investigated until now.
"By analysing ocean sediments, we found that iron minerals were very effective at removing phosphorus from the water."
Phytoplankton growth also boosts atmospheric oxygen because, having split carbon and oxygen and released the oxygen, plants die and their carbon is buried—so it cannot recombine with oxygen to form carbon dioxide.
Despite reductions in photosynthesis and this organic burial of carbon, both due to limited phosphorus, the study suggests oxygen in the atmosphere dropped no lower than 1% of current levels—"just enough" to maintain an oxidizing atmosphere.
"Our observations suggest significant potential variability in atmospheric oxygen concentrations across Earth's 'middle age'," said Professor Tim Lenton, Director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter.
He added: "One question about the emergence of complex life is why it didn't happen sooner.
"Lack of oxygen and lack of nutrients are two possible reasons, and our study suggests both of these may have been the case in the early Neoproterozoic era.
"In fact, if phosphorus levels in the water had dropped any lower, it could have tipped the world back into a 'reducing' atmosphere suitable for bacteria but not for complex life."
A return to a "reducing" atmosphere would have reversed the Great Oxidation Event, which occurred about 2.5 billion years ago, during which photosynthesis by cyanobacteria in the oceans introduced free oxygen to the atmosphere.
More information: Feifei Zhang et al. Extensive marine anoxia associated with the Late Devonian Hangenberg Crisis. March 2020 Earth and Planetary Science Letters 533:115976. DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2019.115976
by National Institute for Environmental Studies
When it comes to fishing, risk management should be conducted separately for rivers and lakes, for greater accuracy. Credit: NIES
After the Fukushima nuclear power plant accident, managing environmental radionuclide contamination efficiently has become incredibly important. In light of this, a team of scientists from Miharu, Japan, have provided insights that could potentially lead to more accurate environmental risk management in the future. They have shown that the factors affecting contamination of freshwater fish differ between lakes and rivers.
In 2011, when the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP) accident occurred, radioactive materials leaked out into the surrounding land and water bodies, and these became highly contaminated. Consequently, to ensure no imminent risks to the health and safety of the people living in the region, fishing in lakes and rivers in the area was restricted, with no indication of when the ban will be lifted. Scientific efforts to measure the contamination levels of the natural resources of the region, and predict when it will become safe to use them, began soon after the incident and have been ongoing. Research—conducted in the aftermaths of the FDNPP incident and others that came before it, such as the Chernobyl accident—has, so far, determined the biotic and abiotic factors affecting the accumulation of radionuclides in fish. The insights thus gained have helped predict and manage contamination in the environment at Fukushima.
But what remains to be studied is whether these underlying factors differ among ecosystems, and if they do, then how. Addressing this question, a group of scientists from the National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan, led by Dr. Yumiko Ishii, analyzed the monitoring data of 30 species of fish and aquatic organisms from five rivers and three lakes in Fukushima. This they did two to four years after the FDNPP accident. In their study, published in Journal of Environmental Radioactivity, they statistically correlated radiocesium measurements with a number of biotic and abiotic factors. Radiocesium, particularly cesium-137, has a long half-life, or decay period, of about 30 years, and is the primary contaminant in the area. As Dr. Ishii explains: "After the FDNPP accident, radiocesium has become a major contaminant in Fukushima, and the risk of exposure to its radiation has become a topic of considerable concern."
The factors that the scientists considered were fish characteristics—feeding habit, body size, and habitat; and water chemistry—salinity, total organic carbon, and suspended solids concentration. Their analysis revealed that the factors affecting radiocesium levels in riverine organisms did not necessarily influence radiocesium levels in organisms from the lake. Specifically, suspended solids concentration, total organic carbon, and salinity were significant factors in rivers, but not in lakes. Feeding habits had a major influence in the case of piscivorous fish in lakes, but not in rivers; this was evident from the fact that significant biomagnification of radiocesium (i.e., the increase in its concentration as it travels up the food chain) was observed only in lakes. Lastly, fish size had noticeable influence in both lakes and rivers.
Overall, these findings show that biotic and abiotic factors affecting radionuclide accumulation in fish are clearly dependent on the ecosystem—and they differ between lakes and rivers. The findings of this study could potentially lead to the implementation of better and more efficient environmental disaster response strategies in the future. As Dr. Ishii concludes, "Considering lakes and rivers separately when looking at the effects of radioactive contamination will lead to better and more accurate environmental risk management."
More information: Yumiko Ishii et al, Different factors determine 137Cs concentration factors of freshwater fish and aquatic organisms in lake and river ecosystems, Journal of Environmental Radioactivity (2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.jenvrad.2019.106102
Provided by National Institute for Environmental Studies
A novel biofuel system for hydrogen production from biomass
Schematic diagram of byproduct production and hydrogen evolution through lignin decomposition. Credit: UNIST
A novel technology has been developed for hydrogen production from the process, which involves electron that is produced during the decomposition of biomass such as waste wood. The result produced after biomass decomposition is a high value-added compound, and it is a two-stone technology that improves the efficiency of hydrogen production.
A research team, led by Professor Jungki Ryu in the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering at UNIST has presented a new biofuel system that uses lignin found in biomass for the production of hydrogen. The system decomposes lignin with a molybdenum (Mo) catalyst to produce high value-added compounds, and the electrons extracted in the process effectively produce hydrogen.
An eco-friendly way of producing hydrogen is the electrolysis of water (H2O). The voltage is applied to the water to produce hydrogen and oxygen at the same time. However, in the currently reported technology, the oxygen generation reaction (OER) is slow and complicated, and hydrogen production efficiency is low. This is because hydrogen gas (H2) is produced by hydrogen ions (H+) as electrons, because these electrons come from the oxygen evolution reaction.
Through the study, Professor Ryu and his research team have developed a new biofuel system that uses lignin as an electron donor in a way to reduce the overall inefficiency of the oxygen evolution reaction (OER). This is the principle of using molybdenum-based inexpensive metal catalysts (PMA) to break down lignin at low temperatures, and extract the electrons produced in the process to produce hydrogen. The new device has been designed to move electrons from lignin, along the wire to the electrode where the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) occurs.
"With this new system, we can produce hydrogen with less energy (overvoltage) than conventional water electrolysis, as there is no need for oxygen reactions, requiring high energy and precious metal catalysts," says Hyeonmyeong Oh (Combined M.S/Ph.D. of Energy and Chemical Engineering, UNIST), the first author of the study. "Conventional methods require more than 1.5 volts, but the new system was capable of producing hydrogen at a much lower potential (0.95 volts)."
In addition, vanillin or carbon monoxide (CO), which are produced via lignin breakdown is very useful substance for various industrial processes. "Lignin, the second most naturally abundant biomass, is difficult to decompose. However, using molybdenum-based catalysts (PMA) it was easily degraded at low temperatures," says Research Assistant Professor Yuri Choi, the co-author of the study.
"The new biofuel system is a technology that produces hydrogen and valuable chemicals using cheap catalysts and low voltages instead of expensive catalysts such as platinum (Pt)," says Professor Ryu. "Our work is also significant, as it presents a new way to replace oxygen-producing reactions in the electrolysis of water."
The findings of this research have been published in ACS Catalysis on January 3, 2020.
More information: Hyeonmyeong Oh et al. Phosphomolybdic Acid as a Catalyst for Oxidative Valorization of Biomass and Its Application as an Alternative Electron Source, ACS Catalysis (2020). DOI: 10.1021/acscatal.9b04099
Dr Valentyna Krashevska collecting samples of organisms from above the ground for analysis. The team collected over 55,000 living organisms including ants, worms, larvae, millipedes, mites, nematodes and single-celled microorganisms from six different microhabitats. Credit: V Krashevska, University of Göttingen
The threat to insects and other small creatures from rainforest clearance and the consequences for the environment in tropical regions are recognised. What has not been studied so far is whether, and how, the oil palm plantations are able to sustain the populations of tiny below-ground animals that work to keep the soil healthy. In a new study led by the University of Göttingen, scientists have discovered high levels of biological activity in regions above ground level that may serve as oases for soil organisms. They identified that the suspended soil in the gaps where the frond grows out of the palm trunk may in fact provide novel microhabitats where soil creatures can thrive. The research was published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.
The rapid expansion of oil palm plantations throughout Southeast Asia due to increasing global food demand has knock-on effects for the environment. Rainforests may be cleared resulting in major losses of soil structure, fertility and biodiversity. In the soil, many creatures are important for ecosystem functions: making nutrients available, forming soil structures, and providing other services such as decomposition, pollination and pest-control. To find out about the biological activity in soil in oil palm plantations, researchers from the University of Göttingen examined soil communities in six different microhabitats in a 16-year-old oil palm plantation in Sumatra, Indonesia. Scientists from the Collaborative Research Centre EFForTS (Ecological and Socioeconomic Functions of Tropical Lowland Rainforest Transformation Systems) collected 9,205 individuals of macrofauna (earthworms and large arthropods such as ants, fly larvae and millipedes), 40,229 of mesofauna (small arthropods such as springtails and mites), 2,895 nematodes, and 4,467 testate amoebae (single-celled microorganisms that have a protective shell around them).
"Since many oil palm plantations may be with us to stay, it is imperative to get a better understanding of soil biodiversity across microhabitats," explains Dr. Anton Potapov from the University of Göttingen. "This will help farmers and plantation-owners to develop more sustainable methods that can preserve ecosystem functioning." One of the microhabitats the researchers studied is formed from the accumulation of dead leaves and other detritus in the gaps at the base of palm fronds. The detritus forms soil-filled crevices suspended above the ground, which make little corners and recesses for soil life. The scientists' analysis showed there were far more active soil dwellers in these suspended soils than below ground.
"It is important to realize that high activity in the suspended soil does not compensate for the degradation of soil below ground," adds Dr. Valentyna Krashevska. "But now we can take advantage of this knowledge and better preserve suspended soil during plantation management, which may partly offset the damage caused by oil palm agriculture to soil-borne processes and biodiversity."
Moss and detritus collects in the axils of cut palm fronds forming pockets of suspended soil which support many soil organisms. Credit: V Krashevska, University of Göttingen
Large-scale anthropogenic changes to the natural environment, including land-use change, climate change, and the deterioration of ecosystem services, are all accelerating. These changes are interacting to generate five major emerging public health threats that endanger the health and well-being of hundreds of millions of people. These threats include increasing exposure to infectious disease, water scarcity, food scarcity, natural disasters, and population displacement. Taken together, they may represent the greatest public health challenge humanity has faced. There is an urgent need to improve our understanding of the dynamics of each of these threats: the complex interplay of factors that generate them, the characteristics of populations that make them particularly vulnerable, and the identification of which populations are at greatest risk from each of these threats. Such improved understanding would be the basis for stepped-up efforts at modeling and mapping global vulnerability to each of these threats. It would also help natural resource managers and policy makers to estimate the health impacts associated with their decisions and would allow aid organizations to target their resources more effectively.
Links Among Human Health, Animal Health, and Ecosystem Health
Annual Review of Public Health
Vol. 34:189-204 (Volume publication date March 2013)
First published online as a Review in Advance on January 16, 2013
In the face of growing world human and animal populations and rapid environmental change, the linkages between human, animal, and environmental health are becoming more evident. Because animals and humans have shared risk to health from changing environments, it seems logical to expand the perspective of public health beyond a single species to detect and manage emerging public health threats. Mitigating the effects of climate change, emerging pathogens, toxicant releases, and changes in the built environment requires a retooling of global public health resources and capabilities across multiple species. Furthermore, human and animal health professionals must overcome specific barriers to interprofessional collaboration to implement needed health strategies. This review outlines the relationships between human, animal, and ecosystem health and the public health challenges and opportunities that these links present.
Two evolutionary spaces illustrate how a small change in environmental conditions with few immediate effects opens up a gradual path toward regime change. Credit: Andre de Roos
When a grassland becomes a desert, or a clearwater lake shifts to turbid, the consequences can be devastating for the species that inhabit them. These abrupt environmental changes, known as regime shifts, are the subject of new research in Nature Ecology & Evolution which shows how small environmental changes trigger slow evolutionary processes that eventually precipitate collapse.
Until now, research into regime shifts has focused on critical environmental thresholds, or "tipping points," in external conditions—eg when crossing a certain temperature threshold triggers a sudden shift to desertification. But the new model by Catalina Chaparro-Pedraza and SFI External Professor André de Roos, both at the University of Amsterdam, reveals how a small change in the external environment, with little immediate impact, can induce slow evolutionary changes in the species that inhabit the system. After what the researchers call a "considerable delay," wherein species slowly evolve a new trait or behavior over generations, the regime shift manifests as a delayed reaction.
"Instead of looking for a straightforward relationship between environmental tipping points and ecosystemic collapse, our work brings evolution into the picture," Chaparro-Pedraza explains. "Even though the outcome is the same, we think it's critically important to map out different paths that lead to regime shifts so we can predict and eventually prevent them."
In their model, the researchers demonstrate how these evolution-induced, delayed regime shifts arise in communities of salmon. At different stages of their lives, salmon live in freshwater and marine ecosystems, which both have entirely different biological communities. When a slight change in the marine environment reduces the mortality exposure of the saltwater salmon population, the immediate effects are minor. However, it initiates an evolutionary process that slowly drives individual character traits, like the optimal body size for migrating from the river to an open ocean, to a critical threshold where a regime shift occurs. Remarkably, this regime shift produces dramatic changes in community composition in both the freshwater and marine communities simultaneously, even though nothing changed in the environmental conditions of the freshwater community.
Understanding the role of evolutionary processes in regime shifts could also shed light on other complex, interdependent systems. De Roos and Chaparro-Pedraza also examined data from the 2008 financial crisis, which, according to de Roos, "seem pretty much in line with the adaptation-induced regime shift we report in this paper." In this example, the 2008 crash can be seen as the delayed regime shift. The deregulation of the financial system in the 1970s and 1980s would be the environmental change with a negligible immediate effect, and the documented trend of banks changing their debt-to-asset ratio would be analogous to the evolutionary process triggered by the environmental change.
"Regime shifts don't just happen in ecosystems," says de Roos. "They also appear in systems like stock markets. Our model shows the evolutionary mechanism by which a sudden change—like an ecosystem or financial collapse—may be the result of a small environmental change in the distant past."
More information: P. Catalina Chaparro-Pedraza et al. Ecological changes with minor effect initiate evolution to delayed regime shifts, Nature Ecology & Evolution (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-020-1110-0
Coronavirus: Domestic livestock strains are commonplace
Strains of coronavirus can occur annually in domestic cattle herds. Credit: Texas A&M AgriLife photo by Kay Ledbetter
Many people are hearing about coronavirus for the first time as COVID-19 affecting humans causes concern all across the world. But coronaviruses are not new to livestock and poultry producers, according to a Texas A&M AgriLife veterinary epidemiologist.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, common human coronaviruses usually cause mild to moderate upper-respiratory tract illnesses, like the common cold. Most people get infected with one or more of these viruses at some point in their lives.
But the CDC is now responding to an outbreak of respiratory disease caused by a novel or new coronavirus that was first detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China.
"Coronavirus is a common virus in livestock herds and poultry flocks seen routinely worldwide," said Heather Simmons, DVM, Institute for Infectious Animal Diseases, IIAD, associate director as well as Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service's associate department head and extension program leader for Veterinary Medical Extension. IIAD is a member of the Texas A&M University System and Texas A&M AgriLife Research.
Wildlife in China may be human strain carriers
"In wildlife, bats are known to carry over 100 different strains of coronavirus, and wild civets are the source of the coronavirus that causes SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), first reported in China in 2002-2003," Simmons said. "Although our understanding is still limited, wild pangolins (a scaly anteater) sold at live markets may be associated with the recently reported coronavirus outbreak in China."
Bats, civets and pangolins are all commonly sold at live markets in China, she said. Coronaviruses from wildlife are dangerous since they have the potential to mutate, adapt and spill over to new species, including humans.
"That is the concern now, this new strain of coronavirus has emerged to cause disease in humans," Simmons said. "It is important to create an understanding of the difference between coronaviruses occurring in domestic livestock and poultry compared to coronaviruses that spill over from wildlife to humans."
Coronavirus in domestic livestock doesn't jump to humans
Simmons said, to date, the coronaviruses in livestock are not considered reportable diseases because their main effect is as an economic burden to livestock producers.
They are known to occur worldwide annually, with some of the most common coronaviruses found in production animals to include the scours and winter dysentery in beef and dairy cattle, porcine respiratory coronavirus in swine and avian infectious bronchitis in poultry.
The World Health Organization has reported that while another coronavirus, MERS-CoV, is known to be transmitted from dromedary camels to humans, other coronaviruses circulating in domestic animals have not yet infected humans.
"That's what is very important to understand at this time," Simmons said. "We have been dealing with these diseases for a long time but as of yet, we have not seen cases worldwide transmitted from livestock to humans or vice versa."
What does coronavirus look like in livestock?
While coronaviruses have a high morbidity, or rate of illness, in livestock and poultry they are generally considered to have low mortality, rate of death, Simmons said. Coronaviruses will affect either the respiratory system or the gastrointestinal system, depending on the species and the age of the animal.
Coronavirus in cattle
In calves, diarrhea commonly occurs in animals under three weeks of age due to a lack of obtaining antibodies when the calf does not get enough colostrum from the mother in order to build up immunity. Clinical signs include severe dehydration and diarrhea. The severity of the clinical signs depends on the age of the calf and their immune status. This is often seen by producers in the winter months as the virus is more stable in cold weather. The second clinical syndrome, winter dysentery is found in adult cattle. Clinical signs include bloody diarrhea with decreased mild production, loss of appetite with some respiratory signs. Bovine coronaviruses can also cause mild respiratory disease or pneumonia in calves up to six months. The virus is shed in the environment through nasal secretions and through feces.
Coronavirus in swine
There are multiple coronaviruses that affect swine. Like cattle, they affect the respiratory or gastrointestinal tract. In sows and piglets, porcine respiratory coronavirus usually presents with no clinical signs. If clinical signs do occur, it may be a transient cough within the herd and spread of this disease occurs through aerosolized methods.
Coronavirus in poultry
Infectious bronchitis virus, or IBV, is a rapidly spreading respiratory disease in young chicks. Clinical signs in laying hens include reduced production, eggshell abnormalities and decreased internal egg quality.
How to treat
Livestock producers should consult with a veterinarian for treatment, Simmons said. Treatment in livestock herds and poultry flocks typically includes supportive therapy of fluids. Antibiotics are not indicated for viral infections but may be used if a secondary bacterial infection occurs.
Water vapor (gray) and sea surface temperature (blue to red) from the high-resolution E3SMv1. Just above center you can see a hurricane and the track of cold water (green) it produces trailing behind it. Credit: Mat Maltrud / Los Alamos National Laboratory
Earth supports a breathtaking range of geographies, ecosystems and environments, each of which harbors an equally impressive array of weather patterns and events. Climate is an aggregate of all these events averaged over a specific span of time for a particular region. Looking at the big picture, Earth's climate just ended the decade on a high note—although not the type one might celebrate.
In January, several leading U.S. and European science agencies reported 2019 as the second-hottest year on record, closing out the hottest decade. July went down as the hottest month ever recorded.
Using new high-resolution models developed through the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science, researchers are trying to predict these kinds of trends for the near future and into the next century; hoping to provide the scientific basis to help mitigate the effects of extreme climate on energy, infrastructure and agriculture, among other essential services required to keep civilization moving forward.
Seven DOE national laboratories, including Argonne National Laboratory, are among a larger collaboration working to advance a high-resolution version of the Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM). The simulations they developed can capture the most detailed dynamics of climate-generating behavior, from the transport of heat through ocean eddies—advection—to the formation of storms in the atmosphere.
"E3SM is an Earth system model designed to simulate how the combinations of temperature, winds, precipitation patterns, ocean currents and land surface type can influence regional climate and built infrastructure on local, regional and global scales," explains Robert Jacob, Argonne's E3SM lead and climate scientist in its Environmental Science division. "More importantly, being able to predict how changes in climate and water cycling respond to increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) is extremely important in planning for our future."
"Climate change can also have big impacts on our need and ability to produce energy, manage water supplies and anticipate impacts on agriculture" he adds, "so DOE wants a prediction model that can describe climate changes with enough detail to help decision-makers."
Facilities along our coasts are vulnerable to sea level rise caused, in part, by rapid glacier melts, and many energy outages are the result of extreme weather and the precarious conditions it can create. For example, 2019's historically heavy rainfalls caused damaging floods in the central and southern states, and hot, dry conditions in Alaska and California resulted in massive wild fires.
And then there is Australia.
To understand how all of Earth's components work in tandem to create these wild and varied conditions, E3SM divides the world into thousands of interdependent grid cells—86,400 for the atmosphere to be exact. These account for most major terrestrial features from "the bottom of the ocean to nearly the top of the atmosphere," collaboration members wrote in a recent article published in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems.
"The globe is modeled as a group of cells with 25 kilometers between grid centers horizontally or a quarter of a degree of latitude resolution," says Azamat Mametjanov, an application performance engineer in Argonne's Mathematics and Computer Science division. "Historically, spatial resolution has been much coarser, at one degree or about 100 kilometers. So we've increased the resolution by a factor of four in each direction. We are starting to better resolve the phenomena that energy industries worry about most—extreme weather."
Researchers believe that E3SM's higher-resolution capabilities will allow researchers to resolve geophysical features like hurricanes and mountain snowpack that prove less clear in other models. One of the biggest improvements to the E3SM model was sea surface temperature and sea ice in the North Atlantic Ocean, specifically, the Labrador Sea, which required an accurate accounting of air and water flow.
"This is an important oceanic region in which lower-resolution models tend to represent too much sea ice coverage," Jacob explains. "This additional sea ice cools the atmosphere above it and degrades our predictions in that area and also downstream."
Increasing the resolution also helped resolve the ocean currents more accurately, which helped make the Labrador Sea conditions correspond with observations from satellites and ships, as well as making better predictions of the Gulf Stream.
Another distinguishing characteristic of the model, says Mametjanov, is its ability to run over multiple decades. While many models can run at even higher resolution, they can run only from five to 10 years at most. Because it uses the ultra-fast DOE supercomputers, the 25-km E3SM model ran a course of 50 years.
Eventually, the team wants to run 100 years at a time, interested mainly in the climate around 2100, which is a standard end date used for simulations of future climate.
Higher resolution and longer time sequences aside, running such a model is not without its difficulties. It is a highly complex process.
For each of the 86,400 cells related to the atmosphere, researchers run dozens of algebraic operations that correspond to some meteorological processes, such as calculating wind speed, atmospheric pressure, temperature, moisture or the amount of localized heating contributed by sunlight and condensation, to name just a few.
"And then we have to do it thousands of times a day," says Jacob. "Adding more resolution makes the computation slower; it makes it harder to find the computer time to run it and check the results. The 50-year simulation that we looked at in this paper took about a year in real time to run."
Another dynamic for which researchers must adjust their model is called forcing, which refers mainly to the natural and anthropogenic drivers that can either stabilize or push the climate into different directions. The main forcing on the climate system is the sun, which stays relatively constant, notes Jacob. But throughout the 20th century, there have been increases in other external factors, such as CO2 and a variety of aerosols, from sea-spray to volcanic.
For this first simulation, the team was not so much probing a specific stretch of time as working on the model's stability, so they chose a forcing that represents conditions during the 1950s. The date was a compromise between preindustrial conditions used in low-resolution simulations and the onset of the more dramatic anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and warming that would come to a head in this century.
Eventually, the model will integrate current forcing values to help scientists further understand how the global climate system will change as those values increase, says Jacob.
"While we have some understanding, we really need more information—as do the public and energy producers—so we can see what's going to happen at regional scales," he adds. "And to answer that, you need models that have more resolution."
One of the overall goals of the project has been to improve performance of the E3SM on DOE supercomputers like the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility's Theta, which proved the primary workhorse for the project. But as computer architectures change with an eye toward exascale computing, next steps for the project include porting the models to GPUs.
"As the resolution increases using exascale machines, it will become possible to use E3SM to resolve droughts and hurricane trends, which develop over multiple years," says Mametjanov.
"Weather models can resolve some of these, but at most for about 10 days. So there is still a gap between weather models and climate models and, using E3SM, we are trying to close that gap."
The E3SM collaboration's article, "The DOE E3SM Coupled Model Version 1: Description and Results at High Resolution," appeared in the December 2019 issue of Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems.
More information: Peter M. Caldwell et al. The DOE E3SM Coupled Model Version 1: Description and Results at High Resolution, Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems (2019). DOI: 10.1029/2019MS001870
Above-average autumn temperatures expected even if El Nino unlikely
by World Meteorological Organization
Credit: WMO
Above average temperatures are expected in many parts of the globe in the next few months, even without the presence of a warming El Niño event, according to the World Meteorological Organization.
WMO's El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Update said that there is a 60% chance of ongoing ENSO-neutral conditions continuing during March-May 2020. The chances for an El Niño or La Niña are 35% and 5% respectively. For the June-August 2020 season, the chance for ENSO-neutral is 55%, that for El Niño is 20-25% and that for La Niña is also 20-25%.
The El Niño/Southern Oscillation is a naturally occurring phenomenon involving fluctuations of ocean surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, coupled with changes in the overlying atmospheric circulation. It has a major influence on weather and climate patterns and is linked to hazards such as heavy rains, floods and drought. El Niño typically has a warming influence on global temperatures, whilst La Niña has the opposite effect.
El Niño and La Niña are not the only naturally occurring phenomena that drive global climate patterns. WMO has therefore introduced a new Global Seasonal Climate Update, currently in a trial phase, which factors in other climate drivers such as the Indian Ocean Dipole.
The Global Seasonal Climate Update said that above average sea surface temperatures are likely across sizeable portions of the globe, both in the tropics and extra-tropics. As a result, the forecast for March-May 2020 leans towards above-normal land temperature, particularly at tropical latitudes.
The global warming trend also contributes to the above-average sea surface temperature and air temperature forecast, it said.
"Even ENSO neutral months are warmer than in the past, as air and sea surface temperatures and ocean heat have increased due to climate change. With more than 90% of the energy trapped by greenhouse gases going into the ocean, ocean heat content is at record levels," said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.
"Thus, 2016 was the warmest year on record as a result of a combination of a strong El Niño and human-induced global warming. 2019 was the second warmest year on record, even though there was no strong El Niño. We just had the warmest January on record. The signal from human-induced climate change is now as powerful as that from a major natural force of nature," said Mr Taalas.
Even though ENSO neutral conditions have prevailed since last July, there was a strong positive phase of the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) – sometimes known as the "Indian Niño." This was linked to drought which contributed to bush fires in Australia, and above average rainfall and flooding in Eastern Africa, the latter setting the scene for the current desert locust crisis in the region. The Indian Ocean Dipole is now neutral.
Above normal precipitation is expected just north of the equator in the central tropical Pacific and southwestern Indian Ocean extending into eastern equatorial Africa. Elevated probabilities of below-normal precipitation extend over much of the rest of the western tropical and extratropical Pacific. Below-normal precipitation is also likely for northern South America, Central America and the Caribbean, and southern Africa, according to WMO's Global Seasonal Climate Update. Southeast Asia, Oceania and western Australia, as well as southern Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, all also experienced drier to much drier than normal anomalies over the preceding November-January season. An outlook for continued dry conditions in these sub-regions suggests that they should be closely monitored in the coming months.
WMO Global Seasonal Climate Updates are based on climate model predictions around the world from WMO Global Producing Centres of Long Range Forecasts.
Both tools are used by planners within the United Nations system, and complement information issued by National Meteorological and Hydrological Services, WMO Regional Climate Centres and Regional Climate Outlook Forums as a source of information for country-level decision-making by disaster managers, for planning in climate-sensitive sectors, and by governments.
