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)
Thursday, November 11, 2021
Record-breaking rainfall in Asia prompts special curated journal issue
International team organizes special issue dedicated to better understanding extreme weather
INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
IMAGE: THE COVER IS A ROUGH DIAGRAM OF THE CIRCULATION WHICH OCCURRED DURING THE EXTRAORDINARILY WET SUMMER MEI-YU OF 2020 IN EASTERN ASIA. IT SHOWS HOW THE RAINFALL PRINCIPALLY OCCURRED AS A RESULT OF WARM, MOIST LOW LEVEL FLOW FROM THE SOUTH MEETING COLDER, UPPER LEVEL FLOW FROM THE NORTH. HIGH PRESSURE (DENOTED BY THE "H'), NORMALLY OVER THE WESTERN NORTH PACIFIC WAS ALSO FURTHER WEST THAN USUAL, HELPING TO FEED ADDITIONAL MOISTURE, FROM THE SOUTH, TOWARDS THE REGIONS MOST IMPACTED BY THE FLOODING.view more
CREDIT: ADVANCES IN ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES
With the impacts of climate change now increasingly hitting parts of the world in the form of, for example, the extreme heatwaves in Canada and Italy, and the severe floods in Europe and China, 2021 has been a year of new records and fear for the future. For large parts of eastern Asia however, the previous summer was one that locals won't forget for many, many years. For vast parts of the region, it was the wettest summer for almost 60 years, with widespread flooding in several provinces of China but also in southern Japan and South Korea. With model projections heralding an approaching world of multiple extremes as climate change begins to bite, the need to understand and predict such events has become ever more pressing, and essential in order to mitigate their worst impacts and save lives in coming decades.
As part of this effort, SpringerNature's peer-reviewedjournal Advances in Atmospheric Sciences invited scientists from several countries, including China, the UK, South Korea, the US and Japan to come together in October 2020 to encourage scientists to research and submit their findings on the East Asian flooding of 2020 to a special issue consecrated to the event. As Dr Robin Clark, one of the co-organizers of the special issue and co-author of the preface, from the UK's national weather agency, the Met Office, says, "Climate change knows no borders and will impact everyone. We're already seeing it's fingerprints on the extreme weather we see around the world so it's important for countries to work together to avoid the very worst impacts of climate change”.
A key aspect of the summer, highlighted by contributions to journal, was extremely unusual behaviour of an anti-cyclone usually present in the sub-tropical west Pacific. As Professor Jianhua Sun, one of the co-organizers of the special issue, from China's Institute of Atmospheric Physics says, “The anticyclone is a feature in every year, but in summer 2020, the periodic evolution of the western Pacific subtropical high is a key atmospheric circulation factor that led to the persistent extreme Meiyu season in 2020.” Many of the scientists writing in the journal attributed this behaviour to the Indian Ocean which was much warmer than normal.
A surprising thing about the 2020 summer was that it wasn’t preceded by a major El Nino, the classic warming in the east Pacific which usually precedes the wettest summers in eastern Asia. However, as a paper led by Dr Congxi Fang, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences points out, there was a warming further west, in the central Pacific, which rapidly cooled which looks to have worked in tandem with the influence of the Indian Ocean, on the behaviour of the west Pacific anticyclone.
Seasonal prediction models appeared to have grasped the underlying effects of the ocean on the high pressure and were even successful in predicting a wetter than normal summer for the Yangtze River region giving useful forewarning but under-predicted the excessive nature of the rainfall. As Professor Xiquan Dong, of the University of Arizona in the US says, “Despite great advances in recent decades, it is still a great challenge to accurately forecast extreme heavy precipitation events, including their spatial and temporal evolutions, coverage and intensity”.
A contribution to the special issue by Dr Clark and co-authors, again from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics also highlighted how the rainfall levels seen in 2020 are something which society will have to prepare for, in future years.
“The studies and outcomes revealed in this special issue on the extreme rainfall in summer 2020 should contribute to a common understanding of extreme weather and rainfall during the Asian monsoon period over East Asia and the surrounding regions.” said preface co-author Tetsuya Takemi, researcher with the Disaster Prevention Research Institute at Kyoto University in Japan.
Other special issue co-organizers include Chang-Hoi Ho, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Seoul National University, Korea; and Huiling Yuan, School of Atmospheric Sciences and Key Laboratory of Mesoscale Severe Weather/Ministry of Education, Nanjing University, China.
The special issue will be available in November, in time for the COP26 climate change conference at Glasgow in the UK.
“Cold Bone”: New Dinosaur Species Discovered That Lived on Greenland 214 Million Years Ago
ByMARTIN LUTHER UNIVERSITY HALLE-WITTENBERGNOVEMBER 9, 2021
Living reconstruction of Issi saaneq, a newly discovered dinosaur that lived on Greenland 214 million years ago. Credit: Victor Beccari
The two-legged dinosaur Issi saaneq lived about 214 million years ago in what is now Greenland. It was a medium-sized, long-necked herbivore and a predecessor of the sauropods, the largest land animals ever to live. It was discovered by an international team of researchers from Portugal, Denmark, and Germany, including the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). The name of the new dinosaur pays tribute to Greenland’s Inuit language and means “cold bone.” The team reports on its discovery in the journal Diversity.
The initial remains of the dinosaur — two well-preserved skulls — were first unearthed in 1994 during an excavation in East Greenland by paleontologists from Harvard University. One of the specimens was originally thought to be from a Plateosaurus, a well-known long-necked dinosaur that lived in Germany, France, and Switzerland during the Triassic Period. Only a few finds from East Greenland have been prepared and thoroughly documented. “It is exciting to discover a close relative of the well-known Plateosaurus, hundreds of which have already been found here in Germany,” says co-author Dr. Oliver Wings from MLU.
Issi saaneq skulls (holotype on the top, paratype on the bottom). Picture and 3D models after the CT-scan. Credit: Victor Beccari
The team performed a micro-CT scan of the bones, which enabled them to create digital 3D models of the internal structures and the bones still covered by sediment. “The anatomy of the two skulls is unique in many respects, for example in the shape and proportions of the bones. These specimens certainly belong to a new species,” says lead author Victor Beccari, who carried out the analyses at NOVA University Lisbon.
The plant-eating dinosaur Issi saaneq lived around 214 million years ago during the Late Triassic Period. It was at this time that the supercontinent Pangaea broke apart and the Atlantic Ocean began forming. “At the time, the Earth was experiencing climate changes that enabled the first plant-eating dinosaurs to reach Europe and beyond,” explains Professor Lars Clemmensen from the University of Copenhagen.
The two skulls of the new species come from a juvenile and an almost adult individual. Apart from the size, the differences in bone structure are minor and only relate to proportions. The new Greenlandic dinosaur differs from all other sauropodomorphs discovered so far, however it does have similarities with dinosaurs found in Brazil, such as the Macrocollum and Unaysaurus, which are almost 15 million years older. Together with the Plateosaurus from Germany, they form the group of plateosaurids: relatively graceful bipeds that reached lengths of 3 to 10 meters.
The new findings are the first evidence of a distinct Greenlandic dinosaur species, which not only adds to the diverse range of dinosaurs from the Late Triassic (235-201 million years ago) but also allows us to better understand the evolutionary pathways and timeline of the iconic group of sauropods that inhabited the Earth for nearly 150 million years.
Once the scientific work is completed, the fossils will be transferred to the Natural History Museum of Denmark.
Reference: “Issi saaneq gen. et sp. nov.—A New Sauropodomorph Dinosaur from the Late Triassic (Norian) of Jameson Land, Central East Greenland” by Victor Beccari, Octávio Mateus, Oliver Wings, Jesper Milàn and Lars B. Clemmensen, 3 November 2021, Diversity. DOI: 10.3390/d13110561
New species of iguanodontian dinosaur discovered from Isle of Wight
IMAGE: RECONSTRUCTION OF THE HEAD OF BRIGHSTONEUS SIMMONDSIview more
CREDIT: CREDIT TO JOHN SIBBICK
Natural History Museum and University of Portsmouth scientists describe new species of dinosaur
Discoveries of iguanodontian dinosaurs from the Isle of Wight have previously only been assigned to Iguanodon or Mantellisaurus
Diversity ofdinosaurs in the Early Cretaceous of the UK is much greater than previously thought
Scientists from the Natural History Museum and University of Portsmouth have described a new genus and species of dinosaur from a specimen found on the Isle of Wight.
The new dinosaur is an iguanodontian, a group that also includes the iconic Iguanodon and Mantellisaurus. Until now, iguanodontian material found from the Wealden Group (representing part of the Early Cretaceous period) on the Isle of Wight has usually been referred to as one of these two dinosaurs – with more gracile fossil bones assigned to Mantellisaurus and the larger and more robust material assigned to Iguanodon.
However, when Dr Jeremy Lockwood - a PhD student at the Museum and University of Portsmouth - was examining the specimen, he came across several unique traits that distinguished it from either of these other dinosaurs.
'For me, the number of teeth was a sign’ Dr Lockwood says. ‘Mantellisaurus has 23 or 24, but this has 28. It also had a bulbous nose, whereas the other species have very straight noses. Altogether, these and other small differences made it very obviously a new species.'
The herbivorous dinosaur was about eight metres in length and weighed about 900kg. Published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, Dr Lockwood describes the species and names it Brighstoneus simmondsi: Brighstoneus after the village of Brighstone, near to the excavation site, and simmondsi honouring Mr Keith Simmonds, who made the discovery of the specimen in 1978.
The discovery of this new species suggests that there were far more iguanodontian dinosaurs in the Early Cretaceous of the UK than previously thought, and that simply assigning specimens from this period to either Iguanodon or Mantellisaurus must change.
'We're looking at six, maybe seven million years of deposits, and I think the genus lengths have been overestimated in the past, ‘says Dr Lockwood. ‘If that's the case on the island, we could be seeing many more new species. It seems so unlikely to just have two animals being exactly the same for millions of years without change.’
Museum scientist Dr Susannah Maidment, a co-author of the paper, says: ‘The describing of this new species shows that there is clearly a greater diversity of iguanodontian dinosaurs in the Early Cretaceous of the UK than previously realised. It’s also showing that the century-old paradigm that gracile iguanodontian bones found on the island belong to Mantellisaurus and large elements belong to Iguanodon can no longer be substantiated’.
The Isle of Wight has long been associated with dinosaur discovery, and even yielded the crucial specimens that led to Sir Richard Owen to coin the term Dinosauria. The authors conclude that the describing of Brighstoneus simmondsi as a new species calls for a reassessment of Isle of Wight material:
'British dinosaurs are certainly not something that's done and dusted at all,’ says Dr Lockwood. ‘I think we could be on to a bit of a renaissance.'
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The study A new hadrosauriform dinosaur from the Wessex Formation, Wealden Group (Early Cretaceous), of the Isle of Wight, Southern England is published in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.
IMAGE: LONG NECK, LONG TAIL, TINY HEAD, TINY TEETH. THESE ICONIC, GARGANTUAN DINOSAURS DEVELOPED A WHOLLY UNIQUE DINING STRATEGY TO SUPPORT THEIR MASSIVE SIZE.view more
CREDIT: IMAGE BY STEPHANIE ABRAMOWICZ, COURTESY OF THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY (NHM).
Los Angeles, CA (November 10, 2021) – How did the largest animals to ever walk the Earth dominate their environments? By doing something totally revolutionary: keeping it simple. Published in BMC Ecology and Evolution, a new study led by Postdoctoral Research Scientist and periodic dinosaur dentist Dr. Keegan Melstrom at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s Dinosaur Institute reveals that colossal sauropod dinosaurs, the largest animals to ever walk the Earth, had a strategy for dining on plants unique to long-necked dinosaurs: linking tooth complexity to how fast teeth were replaced.
“In nearly every other animal we look at, the complexity of a tooth relates to the animal’s diet,” says Dr. Melstrom. “Carnivores have simple teeth, herbivores have complex teeth, often with distinct ridges, crests, and cusps for processing plant material. But sauropods break this incredibly consistent pattern. Instead, these dinosaurs link complexity to tooth replacement rate, with simple teeth being replaced every few weeks!”
The shapes of an animal’s teeth are thought to reveal a lot about its diet and by extension its lifestyle. The banana-sized knives ringing the mouths of T. Rex are perfect for ripping flesh, and deadly simple sharp teeth abound in living and extinct carnivores. Typically, herbivores have extremely complex teeth: perfect for grinding down fibrous leaves or grasses. When it comes to the largest animals to ever walk the Earth, sauropods chewed their own path. Unlike any other plant-eating animals living or extinct, sauropods rely on quickly replacing their teeth to keep the salad flowing.
CAPTION
Close up of a sauropod skull full of simple teeth. These simple, peglike chompers would be rapidly replaced, a strategy unique among all known herbivores.
CREDIT
Image by Stephanie Abramowicz, courtesy of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM).
Keep It Simple, Sauropods
“The diet of extinct dinosaurs was incredibly varied, spanning tiny meat-eaters to massive plant-eaters,” says Dr. Melstrom. “Our research sheds light on the range of adaptations that allowed so many plant-eaters to live alongside one another.”
Using computerized tomography (CT) and microCT scanning, Dr. Melstrom and his colleagues made 3D models of specimens from around the globe, capturing the great diversity of tooth complexity in Late Jurassic dinosaurs.
“This whole project was conducted during the pandemic. Instead of traveling the world to gather data, we relied on researchers who had made their data available to other scientists, as well as the incredible collections here at NHM. I think this project really demonstrates the importance of sharing information, it can lead to new discoveries even during a pandemic,” says Dr. Melstrom.
They converted the toothy hills and valleys of dinosaur teeth into numbers, quantifying tooth complexity between the three groups of dinosaurs: meat-eating theropods, plant-eating ornithischians, and similarly herbivorous sauropods.
What they found was an entirely new evolutionary strategy to handle a plant-based diet 150 million years ago. While meat-eating dinosaurs had sharp simple teeth expected for carnivores, and ornithischians had the more complex teeth similar to herbivores living today, sauropods had very simple teeth, unlike any other known herbivores extinct or living.
In sauropods, they found that the more complex the tooth, the more slowly teeth were replaced, a correlation that demonstrates that tooth replacement rate is related to tooth complexity, unlike any other known animals. More specifically, diplodocoids like Apatosaurus and Diplodocus exhibited incredibly fast replacement rates and simple teeth, possibly allowing them to eat different foods from the other group of sauropods, macronarians like Brachiosaurus, which had more complex teeth.
Simple teeth would have made sense for sauropods’ long necks. Smaller teeth built to be lost weigh less than the tougher teeth of all other herbivores, which helps lighten the skull at the end of those long necks. The peculiar tooth replacement pattern meant these sauropods could focus on plant food other dinosaurs and non-dinosaur plant-eaters passed by.
“Time and time again, the fossil record shows us that there isn’t one solution to evolutionary problems. For sauropods, when it comes to eating tough plants, the simplest solution was the best,” says Dr. Melstrom.
CAPTION
Differing dino teeth. Some sauropods, like Apatosaurus, had simple teeth, more similar to a meat-eater, such as the theropod Allosaurus, than to the small-bodied Nanosaurus, another herbivore.
CREDIT
Image by Dr. Keegan Melstrom, courtesy of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM).
About the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County The Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County (NHMLAC) include the Natural History Museum in Exposition Park, La Brea Tar Pits in Hancock Park, and the William S. Hart Museum in Newhall. They operate under the collective vision to inspire wonder, discovery, and responsibility for our natural and cultural worlds. The museums hold one of the world’s most extensive and valuable collections of natural and cultural history—more than 35 million objects. Using these collections for groundbreaking scientific and historical research, the museums also incorporate them into on- and offsite nature and culture exploration in L.A. neighborhoods, and a slate of community science programs—creating indoor-outdoor visitor experiences that explore the past, present, and future. Visit NHMLAC.ORG for adventure, education, and entertainment opportunities.
CAPTION
A skeletal reconstruction of Fruitadens haagarorum, a diminutive ornithischian. Despite its small size, its tooth reflects the complexity typical in all other herbivores, excepting sauropods.
CREDIT
Silhouette by Stephanie Abramowicz, courtesy of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM).
IMAGE: THE SPECIMEN WAS COLLECTED IN 1894 NEAR SEPPENRADE. LWL-MUSEUM FOR NATURAL HISTORY, MÜNSTER. PHOTO: CI. SCALE: 100 MM.view more
CREDIT: IFRIM ET AL., 2021, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)
The world’s largest ammonite species evolved to reach diameters of 1.5-1.8m around 80 million years ago, possibly to evade predation
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Article Title: Ontogeny, evolution and palaeogeographic distribution of the world’s largest ammonite Parapuzosia (P.) seppenradensis (Landois, 1895)
Author Countries: Germany, Mexico, U.K.
Funding: CI received grant IF61/10-1 from the German Science Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG) WS received grant STI128/40-1 from the DFG Funding to CI for travel and research in Mexico and for analytics was provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; German Science Foundation). Funding to WS for travel and research in Mexico was provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Ontogeny, evolution and palaeogeographic distribution of the world’s largest ammonite Parapuzosia (P.) seppenradensis (Landois, 1895)
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
10-Nov-2021
COI STATEMENT
The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Time series study first to suggest that increased consumption of ultra-processed foods has environmental implications
A new study of 30-year changes in the Brazilian diet finds that increased consumption of ultra-processed foods is linked to worsened impacts on the environment, and echoes dietary changes in the UK
A new study finds that over the last 30 years, Brazil has undergone a nutrition transition toward a diet higher in ultra-processed foods, and that of food types consumed, these have been the largest contributor to worsening impacts on greenhouse gas emissions, the nation’s water footprint and ecological footprint, such as deforestation.
Ultra-processed foods include reconstituted meat products, such as sausages; ready meals; margarines; sweets; soft drinks; and other foods which contain artificial additives like sweeteners and flavours.
Whilst the negative effects of high consumption of ultra-processed foods on health have been outlined for over a decade - including links with obesity, coronary heart disease, diabetes and cancer - there had previously been very little understanding of its effects on the planet.
Experts argue that Britain went through a similar nutrition transition over the last 100 years, and warn that as the economies of more countries grow, so will the trend in the consumption of ultra-processed foods, which could adversely affect their ability to meet climate change targets.
Published in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health, the study is the first of its kind to use nationally representative data over such a long time-frame to demonstrate how changes in a nation’s diet can affect its contribution to climate change.
The international collaboration of authors, including from the University of São Paulo, Brazil; City, University of London; the University of Manchester; Brunel University London; and the University of Sheffield used household budget survey data taken from urban Brazilian households between 1987 to 2018.
They calculated the environmental impact of food items purchased, per 1,000 calories (kcal) consumed, for four food groups outlined by the widely used NOVA system: unprocessed/minimally processed foods (G1); processed culinary ingredients (G2); processed foods (G3); and ultra-processed foods (G4).
The study found that while the proportion of G1 and G2 foods in the households’ diet had decreased, the amount of G3 and G4 foods consumed had increased. It found that the increasing environmental impact of G4 foods was driven by an increase in consumption of ultra-processed meat, which at least doubled its contribution to daily environmental impacts per individual, reaching about 20 per cent of total diet-related footprints over the 30-year time-frame.
Per 1,000 calories consumed, these changes in the diet were associated with a 21 per cent increased contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, 22 per cent increased contribution to the nation’s water footprint and 17 per cent increased contribution to its ecological footprint.
Nutritionist, and first author of the study, Jacqueline Tereza da Silva, of the Department of Preventative Medicine, University of São Paulo, said:
"The relationship between food systems and climate change is complex and challenges food security itself. Food systems are responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and yet, at the same time, they suffer from the climate impacts that they themselves help to cause."
Co-author of the study, Dr Christian Reynolds, Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London said:
“For our health and sustainability, ultra-processed foods are already a massive, and growing problem. This study shows that Brazil is experiencing a similar transition in their diet to what has happened in the UK. Both in a shorter time frame, and with similar large effects on the environment.
“Our findings suggest that diet-related diseases and climate change share an underlying driver and therefore, should be addressed simultaneously. Multicomponent actions and policies targeting multiple areas should be considered. For instance, fiscal interventions such as taxes or subsides, regulation on advertising, and improving food and menus labelling with the addition of environmental impacts.”
Dr Ximena Schmidt, co-author and Global Challenges Research Fellow at the Centre for Sustainable Energy Use, Brunel University London:
“This study shows for the first time how increasing the consumption of ultra-processed foods has produced more greenhouse gas emissions and used more water and land, even in developing countries like Brazil. We need to help people change their diets to protect the environment and live healthy lives. We need to finally acknowledge that impacts to the environment and health have to be tackled together”
The project was funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council Global Challenges Research Fund (STFC GCRF).
JOURNAL
The Lancet Planetary Health
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Observational study
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
People
ARTICLE TITLE
Greenhouse gas emissions, water footprint, and ecological footprint of food purchases according to their degree of processing in Brazilian metropolitan areas: a time-series study from 1987 to 2018
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
10-Nov-2021
COI STATEMENT
The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose
Deforestation drives increasingly deadly heat in Indonesia: study
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
Deforestation and global warming in one Indonesian province caused temperatures to rise nearly a whole degree Celsius in 16 years leading to an eight percent increase in deaths, a study found Wednesday.
The report published inThe Lancet Planetary Healthgives a rare insight into howglobal warmingand deforestation can affect people living in one of the world's most vulnerable regions.
"Heat from deforestation and climate change is killing workers in tropical forest countries and decreasing the ability to work safely," lead author Nicholas Wolff of the Nature Conservancy told AFP.
With resources concentrated in developed countries, studies on the affects of global warming on health and mortality have largely focused on the so called global north.
"There's a real dearth of studies looking at the impacts on those who are most vulnerable to climate change and who are least responsible," Wolff said.
His team used publicly available data to reveal how the clearing of 4,375 square kilometres (1,690 square miles) of forest in the Berau Regency increased daily maximum temperatures by 0.95°C—on top of already warmer global temperatures—between 2002 and 2018.
Some 17 percent of Berau lost tree cover and the resulting heat increase made outdoor work conditions unsafe an additional 20 minutes of the day and caused an estimated 104 deaths.
Using climate modelling, the study projects that under a scenario of +3°C of global warming against pre-industrial levels (or +2°C against 2018 levels) deaths could increase by about 260 per year.
'Different reality'
Wolff's team used satellite image information to determine how much tree cover was lost in Berau between 2002 and 2018—years during which overall whether conditions were otherwise relatively stable.
They calculated the subsequent change in daily average temperatures and found nearly a whole degree Celsius of warming had occurred there in 16 years while over the rest of the country they remained relatively stable.
Wolff says that kind of change in such a short period of time is staggering.
"The globe has warmed about a degree so far... over 150 years," Wolff said referring to warming over pre-industrial levels.
"These forests go in a week or a month and suddenly you're just living in a completely different reality."
Researchers used public health data on heat-related mortality from other regions to calculate how many deaths had likely been caused by the additional heat.
But Wolff says that higher temperatures making it unsafe to work outdoors for an increasing part of the day is an equally bleak finding.
"It's going to affect so much of the larger population," he said, "People are going to have to make these awful choices about whether to risk their lives to put food on the table."
Indonesia is home to the world's third largest rainforest and although deforestation there has slowed markedly since 2015 economic drivers like agriculture, logging and mining mean the trees are still disappearing.
According to Global Forest Watch in 2001 the country had 93.8 million hectares (230 million acres) of primary forest—ancient forests which have largely not been disturbed by human activity—an area about the size of Egypt.
By 2020, that area had decreased by about 10 percent.
Wolff says that the forests act as "natural air conditioners"—a finding that should be considered hopeful.
"They are probably the best bet for adapting to climate change for these countries," he said, adding that re-growing deforested areas was an important option.
A University of Arizona-led effort to reconstruct Earth's climate since the last ice age, about 24,000 years ago, highlights the main drivers of climate change and how far out of bounds human activity has pushed the climate system.
The study, published this week in Nature, had three main findings:
It verified that the main drivers of climate change since the last ice age are rising greenhouse gas concentrations and the retreat of the ice sheets.
It suggests a general warming trend over the last 10,000 years, settling a decade-long debate about whether this period trended warmer or cooler in the paleoclimatology community.
The magnitude and rate warming over the last 150 years far surpasses the magnitude and rate of changes over the last 24,000 years.
"This reconstruction suggests that current temperatures are unprecedented in 24,000 years, and also suggests that the speed of human-caused global warming is faster than anything we've seen in that same time," said Jessica Tierney, a UArizona geosciences associate professor and co-author of the study.
Tierney, who heads the lab in which this research was conducted, is also known for her contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and climate briefings for the U.S. Congress.
"The fact that we're today so far out of bounds of what we might consider normal is cause for alarm and should be surprising to everybody," said lead study author Matthew Osman, a geosciences postdoctoral researcher at UArizona.
An online search of "global temperature change since the last ice age" would produce a graph of global temperature change over time that was created eight years ago.
"Our team's reconstruction improves on that curve by adding a spatial dimension," Tierney said.
The team created maps of global temperature changes for every 200-year interval going back 24,000 years.
"These maps are really powerful," Osman said. "With them, it's possible for anyone to explore how temperatures have changed across Earth, on a very personal level. For me, being able to visualize the 24,000-year evolution of temperatures at the exact location I'm sitting today, or where I grew up, really helped ingrain a sense of just how severe climate change is today."
There are different methods for reconstructing past temperatures. The team combined two independent datasets—temperature data from marine sediments and computer simulations of climate—to create a more complete picture of the past.
The researchers looked at the chemical signatures of marine sediments to get information about past temperatures. Because temperature changes over time can affect the chemistry of a long-dead animal's shell, paleoclimatologists can use those measurements to estimate temperature in an area. It's not a perfect thermometer, but it's a starting point.
Computer-simulated climate models, on the other hand, provide temperature information based on scientists' best understanding of the physics of the climate system, which also isn't perfect.
The team decided to combine the methods to harness the strengths of each. This is called data assimilation and is also commonly used in weather forecasting.
"To forecast the weather, meteorologists start with a model that reflects current weather, then add in observations such as temperature, pressure, humidity, wind direction, and so on to create an updated forecast," Tierney said.
The team applied this same idea to past climate.
"With this method, we are able to leverage the relative merits of each of these unique datasets to generate observationally constrained, dynamically consistent and spatially complete reconstructions of past climate change," Osman said.
Now, the team is working on using their method to investigate climate changes even farther in the past.
"We're excited to apply this approach to ancient climates that were warmer than today," Tierney said, "because these times are essentially windows into our future as greenhouse gas emissions rise."How cold was the ice age? Researchers now know
