Melting Arctic ice will have catastrophic effects on the world, experts say. Here's how.


Melting Arctic ice will have catastrophic effects on the world, experts say. Here's how.

JULIA JACOBO
Fri, December 24, 2021

If there is any doubt about climate change, look no further than the coldest regions of the planet for proof that the planet is warming at unprecedented rates, experts say.

The Arctic, is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the world, according to this year's Arctic Report Card, released last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The phenomenon, known as Arctic amplification, occurs when the sea ice, which is white, thins or disappears, allowing dark ocean or land surfaces to absorb more heat from the sun and release that energy back into the atmosphere.

Widely considered by polar scientists as Earth's refrigerator due to its role in regulating global temperatures, the mass melting of sea ice, permafrost and ice caps in the Arctic is hard evidence of global warming, according to experts.


"The Arctic is the frontline for climate change," climate scientist Jessica Moerman, vice president of science and policy at the Evangelical Environmental Network, a faith-based environmental group, told ABC News. "We should be paying careful attention to what is happening in the Arctic. It may seem like it's far away, but the impacts come knocking on our front door."

MORE: The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, according to NOAA report

Here is how melting in the Arctic could have detrimental effects around the globe, according to experts:

Coastal communities will eventually need to move inland

The biggest long-term effect of warming in the Arctic will be sea level rise, Oscar Schofield, a professor of biological oceanography at Rutgers University, told ABC News.

Melting from he Arctic -- and the Greenland ice sheet in particular -- is the largest contributor to sea level rise in the world. Although the contribution from the Greenland ice sheet is less than a millimeter per year of rising sea level, those small increments add up to between 6 inches to a foot since the Industrial Revolution -- sea levels that infrastructure near oceans was not built to withstand, Schofield said.

A bit "counterintuitively," the loss from the Greenland ice sheet will have its greatest impact on places far away from the Arctic, in low latitudes such as South America due to changes in the global ocean currents, Twila Moon, an Arctic scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center and one of the authors of the Arctic Report Card, told ABC News.

PHOTO: A drop of water falls off an iceberg melting in the Nuup Kangerlua Fjord near Nuuk in southwestern Greenland, Aug. 1, 2017. (David Goldman/AP, FILE)

Sea level rise from melting and continued climate change will exacerbate coastal erosion, flood areas that had previously never seen flooding and even increase inland flooding as the salty ocean waters change groundwater tables and inundate freshwater resources, Moon said.

"If you look at where humanity lives, a great proportion of humanity lives right at the coastlines around the world," he said. "And if you look at where most of the big, mega cities are, they're right along coastlines: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco."

MORE: Polar bears are inbreeding due to melting sea ice, posing risk to survival of the species, scientists say

Global weather systems will shift drastically

The environmental conditions in the Arctic affect weather systems across the world. The North and South poles act as the "freezers of the global system," helping to circulate ocean waters around the planet in a way that helps to maintain the climates felt on land, Moon said.

"What happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic," Moerman said.

The jet stream, a band of strong winds moving west to east created by cold air meeting warmer air, helps to regulate weather around the globe. In the continental U.S., the jet stream forms where generally colder and drier Arctic air meets warmer and more humid air from the Gulf.

But as temperatures in the Arctic warm, the jet stream, which is fueled by the temperature differences, weakens, Moerman said. Rather than a steady stream of winds, the jet stream has become more "wavy," allowing very warm temperatures to extend usually far into the Arctic and very cold temperatures further south than usual, Moon said.

"These cold air outbreaks are really severe," Moerman said.

The variability in the climate in the Arctic, specifically the weakening of the polar vortex, which keeps cold air closer to the poles, likely led to the Texas freeze in February that led to millions without power and hundreds of deaths, a study published in Science in September found.

The study cited an "increasingly frequent number of episodes of extremely cold winter weather over the past four decades" in the U.S., despite temperatures rising overall.

PHOTO: Icebergs and the edge of the ice sheet are seen at the

 west coast close to Tasiilaq, Greenland, Sept. 17, 2021.

 (Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters, FILE)

Scientists are also looking into whether the phenomenon of atmospheric blocking, is potentially linked with extreme summer or winter weather that occurs when the jet stream ebbs and causes weather patterns to stagnate over a period of time, Moon said.

That stagnation was likely the cause of the extreme flooding that occurred in 2017 in Houston, when the system from Hurricane Harvey remained over the region for days, dumping more than 50 inches of rain, and the multiple heatwaves that blanketed much of the Pacific Northwest this past summer, Moerman added.

"These have real-world impacts, whenever extreme cold air leaks out of the Arctic, because of that weakening polar vortex," Moerman said. "And it goes into areas that are not prepared for that extreme weather."

However, despite the existing evidence, more research needs to be done to further establish the link between the weakening polar vortex and extreme weather, Moerman said.

MORE: What to know about the rapid melting of the Greenland ice sheet, a significant contributor to rising sea levels

Shipping lanes will open

Melting sea ice in the Arctic is opening up lanes in the ocean for the global trade route -- lanes that were previously blocked.

In the near future, the melting will have a big impacts on major shipping laws, Schofield said.

"They're no longer going to be sending ships all the way down to the Panama Canal," he said. "They're going to go directly through the Arctic. And so it's going to change commerce, and have very large economic impacts."

PHOTO: The Russian '50 Years of Victory' nuclear-powered icebreaker is seen at the North Pole on Aug. 18, 2021. (Ekaterina Anisimova/AFP via Getty Images, FILE)

But access has the potential to become a "hotbed for new conflict" as nations fight for control over the newly emerged routes, Moerman said.

"There's a lot of effort by countries to really try to claim as much territory as they can right now, because there's likely going to be a huge host of economic incentives to go to this new area and harvest what you can," Schofield said.

Some national security implications could occur as a result of the warming as well, as ice melts and opens up previously blocked landmasses, Moerman added. The U.S. Department of Defense will likely need to restructure its defense profile in the Arctic when there is no longer an ice cap for much of the year, Schofield said.
The pristine ecosystem will likely be ruined

As the woes from a stalled supply chain continue, the ability for shipping containers to utilize more routes in the absence of ice could appear to be beneficial for the world economy.

But it would spell disaster for the regional environment.

Right now, the ecosystem in the Arctic is pristine and untouched, and there are several unique species and ecosystems that have acclimated to the presence of ice, Schofield said.

But as more ships come in and out of the region, the chances that large-scale environmental degradation will occur is high, Moerman said.

"We're definitely seeing changes in animal populations," Moon said. "Certainly animals that depend on sea ice as a primary habitat, as we've lost the vast majority of our thicker sea ice."

PHOTO: A view of icebergs and melting pack ice in Ilulissat icefjord, an UNESCO World Heritage Site, in Ilulissat, Greenland.

 (Sergio Pitamitz/VWPics via AP Images, FILE)

The "poster child" for the effects of the loss of sea ice on species is the polar bear, Schofield said. Polar bear populations have dwindled so low, and the habitats have become so fragmented, that the animals are inbreeding, which could have disastrous effects on the survival of the species within generations.

In Alaska, the number of beaver ponds has doubled since 2000, likely due to the warming trend that has resulted in widespread greening in what was previously tundra, the Arctic Report Card found. The rapid acidification of the warming ocean waters is likely affecting the marine food chain, Moon said. And the increased marine traffic for both fishing and shipping is also likely affecting stress levels and behavior of species, including how they communicate, Moon added.

In addition to an increased chance of oil spills from increased commercial activity is the possibility of new oil and gas fields opening up in Russian territory could further amplify global warming as those natural gases are extracted, Moerman said.

"The question is, is can we get those policies and strategies set up now before there's this massive sort of gold rush on the Arctic Ocean?" Schofield said.

Melting permafrost in the Arctic also poses natural environmental risks, Moon said. The majority of the ground in the Arctic is frozen, and as it thaws, microbes and other living organisms within the organic carbon in the permafrost begin to wake up, releasing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere.

Temperatures need to be below 0 degrees Celsius to grow and maintain ice, Schofield said. But we will likely never regain that ice, as it took thousands of years of snow layers accumulating on top of each other to create the massive ice sheet, which is several miles thick.

"At some point, we're likely to cross the line where, you know, there'll be almost no winter to speak up," Schofield said. "And we see these kinds of effects in these polar regions, like the Arctic and the Antarctic."

Melting Arctic ice will have catastrophic effects on the world, experts say. Here's how. originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

Commentary: Water may soon be a tradable commodity on markets

"A globally integrated market for fresh water within 25-30 years" was predicted by this American professor a decade ago, and it is currently on track to becoming an accurate prediction.

Water flows in the Taynoye Reservoir near the city of Kholmsk, Sakhalin Island, in Russia's Far East, (Photo: AP/Igor Dudkovskiy)


Willem H Buiter
25 Dec 2021

NEW YORK CITY: Just over a decade ago, I predicted the arrival of water as an asset class.

I foresaw a massive expansion of investment in the water sector, including the production of fresh, clean water from other sources (desalination, purification), storage, shipping, and transportation of water


This would result in a globally integrated market for fresh water within 25 to 30 years. Once the spot markets for water are integrated, futures markets and other derivative water-based financial instruments – puts, calls, swaps – both exchange-traded and OTC (over-the-counter) will follow.

There will be different grades and types of fresh water, just the way we have light sweet and heavy sour crude oil today.

In fact, I believed that water would eventually be the single most important physical-commodity-based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities, and precious metals.

Ten years later, the future is now – though not quite what I expected.

A FUTURES MARKET IN WATER

In December 2020, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group created the first futures market in water. Cash-settled water futures with a maximum contract period of two years are now traded on the CME Globex electronic trading system.

I view this development as somewhat premature. For futures markets (and markets for other derivatives like put and call options) to function properly, the underlying spot market – in this case the spot market for physical water or water rights – should be liquid and transparent.

CME Group’s futures market is based on the Nasdaq Veles California Water Index, which tracks the cash price of physical water rights in California, based on transactions in surface water and in four groundwater markets.

Because the local and regional water supplies often are not connected, let alone fully integrated, the spot market underlying the futures market is too segmented; it does not represent a single, homogeneous commodity or asset.

Today’s spot markets for water and water rights thus are too illiquid and non-transparent to support an economically and socially useful futures market.

But there is hope. The regional and global integration of physical water supplies – and the associated spot markets for water and water rights – is making spectacular progress.

NEW PROJECTS IN WATER SHOW A BRIGHTER FUTURE

Two ongoing developments stand out. One is Project Greenland, created and sponsored by Thomas Schumann Capital, in partnership with North Atlantic Research and Survey.

Under its Iceberg Management and Water Extraction Programme, suitable free-floating North Atlantic icebergs weighing 1.2-1.4 million tonnes are towed to an operational location in Scotland, where the ice and water are prepared for international transportation.

The target markets are in the water-deprived Middle East and North Africa. The project is scalable and relies on established technologies and infrastructures being deployed in an innovative and disruptive manner.

Given time, additional technological advances, and proper spot-water pricing, icebergs from Antarctica also could become viable sources of fresh water.

A second fascinating entrant to the global water markets is SkyH2O’s Atmospheric Water Generation (AWG) system, a proprietary technology that extracts clean fresh water from the atmosphere.

The business model here is flexible and scalable, because AWG capacity can be deployed in a distributed manner to reach the ultimate customers, be they governments, households, or industrial, commercial, and agricultural users.

Its cost effectiveness, relative to alternatives like desalination and distillation, depends on atmospheric humidity and the price of energy in the proximity of the customers.

A drop of water falls off an iceberg melting in the Nuup Kangerlua Fjord in southwestern Greenland, Tuesday Aug. 1, 2017. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

The future of water as a significant asset class depends on the willingness of governments – and ultimately of society at large – to price water at its long-run social marginal cost as a scarce renewable resource (including the cost of addressing the negative environmental externalities associated with its production and distribution).

Globally, over 70 per cent of fresh water is used in agriculture, and most of this usage is either free or heavily subsidised. Households in many countries also pay but a small fraction of the long-run social marginal cost of the water they use.

GROWING RECOGNITION OF FRESHWATER SCARCITY

I hope and expect that both these anomalies will soon end. There is growing recognition of deepening freshwater scarcity crises around the world, as well as a greater willingness on the part of policymakers to price negative environmental externalities appropriately.

To recognise water as a scarce renewable resource, a tradable commodity, and a marketable asset is not to diminish its unique significance as a good that is essential to life and viewed by many as a gift from God.

When socially efficient water pricing creates economic hardship, an appropriate fiscal response through targeted income support is required. If this fails – perhaps because the state cannot identify who is adversely affected by proper water pricing – a two-tier tariff may be required.

While a social subsistence level of water should be provided for free or at a heavily subsidised price, all additional water usage could be priced at its full long-run social marginal cost to preserve the right incentives.

Water is indeed becoming an asset class. Give it another decade, and exchange-traded funds for water and water rights will be part of the new normal for investors.

Willem H Buiter is a visiting professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University.

 PROJECT SYNDICATE.

ECOCIDE

Viewer photos, videos show what happened when fire erupted at Baytown's ExxonMobil refinery

New study reveals intensified housing inequality in Canada from 1981 to 2016

Neoliberal housing policies and financialization over the past four decades has helped transform housing in Canada from human necessity to an investment opportunity.

 (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick)

December 23, 2021 

Driven by the neoliberal belief in the superiority of the free market, the housing policy in Canada has shifted from a welfare-oriented policy to a market-oriented one over the past four decades, encouraging home ownership, deregulation and private consumption.

Housing financialization, the transformation of housing from a human right to an investment opportunity, has been driven by the federal government primarily through financial market deregulation and a financial practice called mortgage securitization.

Much of the debate about the housing crisis has focused on the market imbalance between supply and demand, citing factors such as foreign investment and lack of market supply. However, many housing problems today need to be viewed in the historical context of the housing system restructuring, which keeps housing and wealth inequality alive and well.

Using the historical census data of five metropolitan areas — Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton and Calgary — from 1981 to 2016, our study reveals deeply entrenched housing inequality in accessing affordable housing in the post-1990s neoliberal era. Both neoliberal housing policies and housing financialization are important contributors to this intensified housing inequality.

Canada’s housing system: from welfare to neoliberal regime

Until the mid-1980s, Canada had a welfare housing regime with strong state intervention in social housing supply — first in the form of public housing financed and managed by the government, then in community housing developed by a mix of community groups with government funding and finance.

This welfare-oriented regime was transformed into a neoliberal regime in the 1990s, when the federal government moved away from social housing and started relying primarily on the private sector for housing supply.

Federal expenditure on housing programs dropped from nearly 1.5 per cent in 1981 to slightly over 0.6 per cent of the total federal expenditure in 2016. Since then, the social housing sector has become more “core-needs” targeted, supporting people with special needs and leaving those in need of independent social housing to the private market.

Bill C-66 helped channel household savings into increasingly expensive housing markets, boosting housing demand and driving financial capital into the housing market.

 (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang)

The 2000s marked the start of housing financialization in Canada. In 1999, responding to the demands of consumers and the financial sector, the federal government introduced Bill C-66 that aimed to turn the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) from home-builder to mortgage-insurer. With easier access to credits and lower interest rates, household savings were channelled into increasingly expensive housing markets, boosting housing demand and attracting financial capital into the profitable housing market.

More Canadian households face affordability problems over time

The neoliberalization of housing policy came with increased housing inequality. One outcome of housing financialization is the increase in residential mortgage debt to finance housing. The residential mortgage debt to GDP ratio rose from 26 per cent, to a whopping 68 per cent between 1981 and 2016.

Our study uses the shelter-costs-to-income ratio (CIR) to assess housing affordability. Overall, the average CIRs across these five census metropolitan areas fluctuated modestly between 25 per cent and 33 per cent throughout the census years. Yet, more Canadian households have experienced housing unaffordability problems over time. The share of renter households that spend more than 30 per cent of their income on housing increased from 35 per cent to 42 per cent between 1986 and 2016. These numbers for owners increased from 14 per cent to 22 per cent during the same period.

Chart showing the share of renter and owner households that spend more than 30 per cent of income on housing. (Statistics Canada)

Greater inequality in accessing affordable housing in the neoliberal era

The more commodified a housing sector, the more access to housing one would expect to have, contingent on an individual’s economic status rather than citizenship. Indeed, the gap in affordable housing access between income groups has enlarged in Canada.

After taking factors such as household type and size and socio-demographic characteristics into consideration, we estimated that the average CIR for high-income households dropped from 46 per cent for low to middle-income income households, to 40 per cent post-2001. This suggests a greater gap in accessing affordable housing determined by income, and a more commodified housing sector in the neoliberal era.

Chart illustrating the predicted shelter-costs-to-income ratio of high-income households to low and medium-income households. (Author provided)

The reduced federal expenditure on social housing and increasing residential-debt-to-GDP ratio, induced by housing financialization, shows significant effects on the rising housing unaffordability, among other macroeconomic factors such as GDP growth and unemployment rates.

While the withdrawal of the federal funding increased housing costs for both income groups, housing financialization exacerbated housing unaffordability only for low to middle-income households, while benefiting high-income households by improving housing affordability for them. This reflects the private market’s incluination to respond to the housing demand of those with stronger purchasing power, leading to reduced housing supply for those at the bottom of the income ladder and reinforcing housing inequality between the two income groups.

The vulnerability of low-income renters and young homeowners

Housing commodification and financialization in the neoliberal era have had uneven impacts on Canadian households. Low to middle-income renters at all ages appear to encounter housing affordability stress, although their CIR remains relatively stable over time.

In contrast, the CIR for low to middle-income homeowners increased substantially over time. Young homeowners are the worst off due to easier access to mortgage loans and slow income improvement, representing a new form of housing vulnerability. While high-income homeowners have also experienced rising CIR over time, their CIR remain well below 30 per cent. High-income renters have seen improved affordability over the years.

Chart showing predicted shelter-costs-to-income ratio by age, tenure and income, 1981-2016. Low-income renters and low-income young homeowners are disproportionately impacted by rising housing unaffordability. (Author provided)

Housing gaps widest among women and immigrants

There are significant housing affordability gaps between different gender and immigrant groups. These disparities do exist regardless of housing tenure, but they were only present among low to middle-income households. While established immigrants tend to catch up with native-born Canadians, the gender gap persists among low-income households, regardless of immigrant status. This implies the existence of systemic barriers in low-income female-led households, such as male bias in the design and planning of the residential spaces in social housing.

Chart demonstrating predicted shelter-costs-to-income ratio in 2016 by sex, income and immigrant status for renters (a) and owners (b). Low-income recent immigrants and low-income female-led households are disadvantaged in affordable housing access. (Author provided)

Overall, Canada’s housing section is highly commodified, with income playing a major role in accessing affordable housing. To date, housing policies have mainly focused on market solutions, such as discouraging foreign investment or encouraging the market supply of affordable housing. However, the intensified market mechanism resulting from neoliberal housing policies has widened the housing disparity gap between the haves and the have-nots.

State institutions have been utilized and transformed to facilitate, rather than limit, the commodification and financialization of housing. It is vital for public policies to recognize the state as part of the housing problem and shift the policy narratives around housing unaffordability from simply a market disequilibrium problem, to a failure of state institutions.

Author

Yushu Zhu
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Urban Studies and Public Policy, Simon Fraser University
Disclosure statement
Yushu Zhu receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Partners
Simon Fraser University provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA-FR.

Provinces' next step on building small nuclear reactors to come in the new year

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Alberta joined Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick

in team effort to harness nuclear energy

Elise von Scheel · CBC News · Posted: Dec 23, 2021 5:00 AM MT | Last Updated: December 23

Four provinces are exploring how to harness nuclear energy. Clockwise from top left are Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney. (CBC)

Alberta's ministry of energy says the four provinces cooperating on nuclear reactor technology are aiming to release their strategic plan in the new year. 

In August 2020, Alberta announced it would join Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick on a pre-existing memorandum of understanding to explore and eventually develop small reactors.

The small modular reactor (SMR) strategic plan, a collaboration between the four provinces, is in development now and Alberta says it's planning for the details to be released shortly. 

"[The] provinces are aiming to release the plan in early 2022," Jennifer Henshaw, Energy Minister Sonya Savage's press secretary, said in a statement. 

• UPDATED
  Alta., Ont., Sask. and N.B. sign agreement to explore small nuclear reactors

The group released a feasibility study in April which found SMRs could help Canada improve its domestic energy security and aid in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The upcoming strategic plan was originally expected to be completed in the spring of 2021. 

Nuclear energy works by splitting atoms, which creates heat that can then be harnessed and turned into electricity. 

"If you're going to get to net zero [emissions], there is no way to do this without nuclear. And given the importance of the oil sands in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, this may be the opportunity," Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University who is also an expert in Canada's history with nuclear energy, said. 

Canada has committed to reaching that net zero target by 2050. 

The operation of SMRs doesn't produce carbon emissions. However, its status as a fully clean energy has been criticized due to the dangers of disposing the radioactive waste. 

Federal government looking at national nuclear supply chain

This fall the federal government put out a tender to study how Alberta and Saskatchewan could contribute to a national nuclear supply chain. 

"Alberta Energy was engaged by Prairies Economic Development Canada (PrairiesCan) for the development of their SMR Supply Chain Study project," Henshaw said. 

"Alberta Energy, the Alberta Utilities Commission and the Alberta Energy Regulator will be working together to identify and address potential areas of overlap, uncertainty and duplication between federal and provincial regulatory regimes."

Traditional nuclear reactors used in Canada can typically generate about 800 megawatts of electricity, or about enough to power 600,000 homes at once, assuming one megawatt can power about 750 homes. The term SMR, on the other hand, is applied to units that produce less than 300 megawatts of electric output. Some SMRs are small enough to fit into a school gym.

No SMRs have been built yet, but Ontario Power Generation says it's on track to have two established by 2028. A Saskatchewan report estimates it will have SMRs by 2032. The small reactors are cheaper and require less complex engineering.

• Modular nuclear reactors a 'long shot' worth studying, says Yukon gov't

SMRs could have the capacity to provide largely emission-free energy to oilsands facilities, according to a roadmap prepared last year by an intergovernmental committee and industry stakeholders. It warns that cost and regulatory hurdles could be serious roadblocks.

"I haven't heard Alberta-based oil and gas companies being so bullish on nuclear before. And so this is industry led, not government led," Bratt said.

He added collaboration between the provincial and federal governments is also essential, because while electricity is Alberta's jurisdiction, nuclear is in the national purview.

With files from Sarah Rieger and Hannah Kost

China advances in nuclear power with world's first small modular nuclear reactor

WION Web Team
New Delhi Published: Dec 23, 2021


The application of SMRs has the ability to drastically cut down the consumption of fossil fuel energy in China

China is now home to the world's first small modular nuclear reactor. The Huaneng Group Co.’s 200-megawatt unit 1 reactor at Shidao Bay provides power to the grid in Shandong province.

The reactor can use nuclear energy for various functions including power generation. It can also be used in the mining sector, industrial parks and for high-end consumption industries.

The plant uses helium instead of water to produce power. Its fourth-generation reactor shuts down passively in case of any problem.

The small module reactors or SMRs, at 200 megawatts are nearly one-fifth the size of Hualong One, which happens to be China’s first homegrown reactor design. "SMRs should be less costly to build and operate, faster to implement and have shorter shutdown times during refuelling than traditional nuclear plants,” Jefferies analyst Bolor Enkhbaatar said.

The application of SMRs has the ability to drastically cut down the consumption of fossil fuel energy in China. This can further help in promoting energy conservation and carbon emission reduction.

A report by Bloomberg reveals that no country in the world is spending on a nuclear plant as much as China. The country is expected to invest $440 billion into new plants in the coming 10 years.

China has reportedly built 51 nuclear power units with 19 under construction. It currently has the world's third-largest park of nuclear reactors after the US and France and has invested in developing the nuclear energy sector.

(With inputs from agencies)

Poland narrows down nuclear sites

22 December 2021

The seaside towns of Lubiatowo and Kopalino in Poland's Choczewo municipality have been named as the preferred location for the country's first large nuclear power plant.

Lubiatowo-Kopalinio is a coastal location whereas Żarnowiec is lakeside (Image: PEJ)

The choice was announced by Polskie Elektrownie Jadrowe (PEJ), the government company that is progressing its policy to deploy up to six reactors at multiple sites by 2040.

PEJ said very detailed environmental and location studies have been conducted on the area since 2017, with the support of Jacobs as a technical advisor. Potential nuclear energy development in Choczewo has been a subject of public discussion since Poland's programme began in 2011. A nationwide effort to raise awareness of nuclear energy has seen three local information centres established in the area, among other efforts. The goal was to "enable everyone to form their own opinion."

The "substantive" work on an environmental impact assessment has been completed, PEJ said when announcing the siting preference. It noted that national and European legislation has evolved over the course of the study and this needs to be reflected in the final report. "Therefore, the report will be completed and submitted to the General Director of Environmental Protection in the first quarter of next year, after the amended regulations enter into force," it said.

The study began with 92 potential sites, said PEJ. They were assessed on "factors such as land characteristics, cooling water availability, location in relation to areas covered by forms of nature protection, including Natura 2000 sites, and existing and expandable infrastructure elements, such as energy, road and rail networks." (Natura 2000 is a coordinated network of protected habitat areas stretching across the EU.)

This confirmed that the province of Pomerania was generally suitable, and more detailed studies began both on Lubiatowo-Kopalino and Żarnowiec. These confirmed that the location of Lubiatowo-Kopalino "is the best option for the environment and safe for people," said PEJ.

"We want the entire investment process in the project of the first nuclear power plant in Poland to be transparent, responsible and to the highest standards from the very beginning," said Tomasz Stępień, chair of PEJ. The "long-term and comprehensive analysis" of locations where the power plant could be built has been a priority for the company in recent years, he added.

PEJ noted a recent opinion poll that showed 74% support for construction of nuclear power plants in Poland as well as 63% support among residents of Choczewo, Gniewino and Korkowa to build nuclear facilities in Pomerania province.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

Antarctic Roundup: Another Evacuation

Martin Walsh

 23/12/2021

Lou Rudd on a previous expedition. Photo: Lou Rudd

This week in Antarctica features more drama. Another expedition has required an emergency evacuation, and the weather continues to frustrate Robert Packshaw and Jamie Facer-Childs.

Packshaw and Facer-Childs kite-ski expedition

Packshaw and Facer-Childs can’t seem to catch a break. “Patience and respect are qualities you need an abundance of here,” Packshaw wrote in a recent post. With only a smattering of good weather days, the duo will need all the patience they can muster.

Packshaw and Facer-Childs are heading south, but the prevailing wind has been blowing north. On some days, this means they travel long distances but make little progress. Day 37 was a good example; there was enough wind to travel and they clocked up 77km, but only 45 of those kilometres were toward the South Pole.

Forty days into the expedition, they have covered 1,328km.

Martin Hewitt and Lou Rudd

Hewitt and Rudd made it back to Thiels Corner, and ALE picked them up. Now back at Union Glacier, they hope that Hewitt’s Achilles tendonitis will clear up with lots of rest and anti-inflammatories.

If his Achilles tendon plays ball, Hewitt and Rudd plan to ski the last degree to the South Pole and then climb Mount Vinson.

Hewitt believes that his unevenly weighted sled and sastrugi (pictured here by Preet Chandi) led to his Achilles problem. Photo: Preet Chandi

Solo expeditions

In our last update, Preet Chandi was mulling whether to decrease her time skiing and get more sleep. Already ahead of schedule, she has chosen to keep pushing.

Chandi seems to be coping well, though she’s tired of the long uphill to the polar plateau: “Still lots and lots of uphill. At one point I was daydreaming about how it would feel going the other way with the wind behind me,” she said in a recent update.

Further south, Masatatsu Abe is either going a bit mad or is experiencing very different weather from the other expeditions. “The southern hemisphere has a high solar zenith around the summer solstice,” he wrote yesterday. “The maximum temperature is -4℃. It can’t be helped because it’s hot when there is no wind. Get naked and cool.”

Masatatsu Abe enjoying the warm weather. Photo: Masatatsu Abe

 

Abe is covering between 13 and 18km per day and has also experienced a few days with strong headwinds.

On December 21, he made a surprise find. Hundreds of kilometres from the sea, he found a bird on the ice. It was the first living thing Abe had seen in a month, but the bird wasn’t keen to hang out and flew off when he approached.

ALE guided group

The ALE guided group could have done with some of Abe’s warm weather. Team member Akshay Nanavati had to be evacuated due to fairly severe frostbite. “We were all cruising along when on the start of the seventh shift, I felt my right ring finger go numb,” Nanavati said. “I knew we only had two more shifts to go, I thought I’d just suck it up. But after a while, something was clearly wrong.”

Nanavati is now back at Union Glacier getting treatment. It looks like he’ll keep his fingers, but a long recovery period is ahead of him: “The doctor said if I expose these fingers to the cold any more, I’d lose them. My three fingers will essentially be out of commission for six months.”

Akshay Nanavati’s frostbitten fingers. Photo: Akshay Nanavati

About the Author

Martin Walsh
Martin Walsh is a freelance writer and wildlife photographer based in Da Lat, Vietnam.
A history graduate from the University of Nottingham, Martin's career arc is something of a smörgåsbord. A largely unsuccessful basketball coach in Zimbabwe and the Indian Himalaya, a reluctant business lobbyist in London, and an interior design project manager in Saigon.
He has been fortunate enough to see some of the world. Highlights include tracking tigers on foot in Nepal, white-water rafting the Nile, bumbling his way from London to Istanbul on a bicycle, feeding wild hyenas with his face in Ethiopia, and accidentally interviewing Hezbollah in Lebanon.
His areas of expertise include adventure travel, hiking, wildlife, and half-forgotten early 2000s indie-rock bands.

Unprecedented die-offs, melting ice: Climate change is wreaking havoc in the Arctic and beyond

by Susanne Rust

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Forces profound and alarming are reshaping the upper reaches of the North Pacific and Arctic oceans, breaking the food chain that supports billions of creatures and one of the world's most important fisheries.

In the last five years, scientists have observed animal die-offs of unprecedented size, scope and duration in the waters of the Beaufort, Chukchi and northern Bering seas, while recording the displacement and disappearance of entire species of fish and ocean-dwelling invertebrates. The ecosystem is critical for resident seals, walruses and bears, as well as migratory gray whales, birds, sea lions and numerous other animals.

Historically long stretches of record-breaking ocean heat and loss of sea ice have fundamentally changed this ecosystem from bottom to top and top to bottom, say researchers who study its inhabitants. Not only are algae and zooplankton affected, but now apex predators such as killer whales are moving into areas once locked away by ice—gaining unfettered access to a spoil of riches.

Scientists describe what's going on as less an ecosystem collapse than a brutal "regime shift"—an event in which many species may disappear, but others will replace them.

"You can think of it in terms of winners and losers," said Janet Duffy-Anderson, a Seattle-based marine scientist who leads annual surveys of the Bering Sea for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Alaska Fisheries Science Center. "Something is going to emerge and become the more dominant species, and something is going to decline because it can't adapt to that changing food web."

A team from The Times traveled to Alaska and spoke with dozens of scientists conducting field research in the Bering Sea and high Arctic to better understand these dramatic changes. Their findings suggest that this vast, near-polar ecosystem—stable for thousands for years and resilient to brief but dramatic swings in temperature—is undergoing an irreversible transition.

"It's like the gates of hell have been opened," said Lorenzo Ciannelli, a fisheries oceanographer at Oregon State University, referring to a once ice-covered portion of the Bering Sea that has largely disappeared.

Since 2019, federal investigators have declared unexplained mortality events for a variety of animals, including gray whales that migrate past California and several species of Arctic seals. They are also examining large die-offs—or "wrecks," as avian biologists call them—in dozens of seabird species including horned puffins, black-legged kittiwakes and shearwaters.

At the same time, they are documenting the disappearance of the "cold pool"—a region of the northern Bering Sea that for thousands of years has served as a barrier that protects cold-water species, such as Arctic cod and snow crab, from subarctic species, such as walleye pollock and Pacific cod. In the last five years, many of these Arctic species have almost entirely disappeared from the northern Bering, while populations of warmer-dwelling fish have proliferated.

In 2010, a federal survey estimated there were 319,000 metric tons of snow crab in the northern Bering Sea. As of this year, that number had dropped by more than 75%. Meanwhile, a subarctic fish, the Pacific cod, has skyrocketed—going from 29,124 metric tons in 2010 to 227,577 in 2021.

Whether the warming has diminished these super-cold-water species or forced them to migrate elsewhere—farther north or west, across the U.S.-Russia border, where American scientists can no longer observe them—remains unclear. But scientists say animals seem to be suffering in these more distant polar regions too, according to sporadic reports from the area.

Which gets to the basic challenge of studying this ecosystem: For so long, its remoteness, freezing temperatures and lack of winter sunlight have made the region largely inaccessible. Unlike in temperate and tropical climates, where scientists can obtain reasonably accurate population counts of many species, the Arctic doesn't yield its secrets easily. That makes it hard to establish baseline data for scores of species—especially those with little commercial value.

"That part is really frustrating," said Peter Boveng, who studies Arctic seals for NOAA's Alaska Fisheries Science Center. He said he and his colleagues wonder if the information they are now gathering is truly baseline data, or has already been shifted by years of warming.

Only recently have he and other scientists had the technology to conduct these kinds of counts—using cameras instead of observers in airplanes, for instance, or installing sound buoys across the ice and sea to capture the movement of whales, seals and bears.

"We're only just beginning to understand what is happening up there," said Deborah Giles, a killer whale researcher at the University of Washington's Center for Conservation Biology. "We just couldn't be there or see things in the way a drone can."

The dramatic shifts that Giles, Boveng and others are observing have ramifications that stretch far beyond the Arctic. The Bering Sea is one of the planet's major fishing grounds—the eastern Bering Sea, for instance, supplies more than 40% of the annual U.S. catch of fish and shellfish—and is a crucial food source for thousands of Russians and Indigenous Alaskans who rely on fish, birds' eggs, walrus and seal for protein.

"Globally, cold-water ecosystems support the world's fisheries. Halibut, all of the cod, all of the benthic crabs, lobsters…. This is the majority of the food source for the world," said NOAA's Duffy-Anderson.

The potential ripple effect could shut down fisheries and leave migrating animals starving for food. These include gray whales and short-tailed shearwaters—a bird that travels more than 9,000 miles every year from Australia and New Zealand to feed in the Arctic smorgasbord before flying home.

"Alaska is a bellwether for what other systems can expect," she added. "It's really just a beginning."

***

Flying along the southeastern coastline of Alaska's Kodiak Island, Matthew Van Daele—wearing a safety harness tethered to the inside a U.S. Coast Guard MH-60T Jayhawk—leaned out the helicopter door, scanning the beaches below for dead whales and seals.

The clouds hung low, so the copter hugged close to the sandstone cliffs that rise from this green island, which gets about 80 inches of rain and 60 inches of snowfall every year. Although few dead animals were spotted on this September afternoon, plenty of furry brown Kodiak bears could be seen bounding across open fields and along the beaches, trying to escape the ruckus of the approaching chopper.

"There's one!" yelled Van Daele, natural resources director for the Sun'aq Tribe, speaking through the intercom system to the chopper's pilots as he pointed to a rotting whale carcass on the beach.

The pilots circled and deftly landed on a little strip of sand, careful to keep the rotor blades from hitting the eroding wall of rock on the beach's edge.

Joe Sekerak, a NOAA enforcement officer, jumped out after Van Daele, holding a rifle should hungry Kodiak bears arrive to challenge the small team in its attempt to examine the whale carcass.

According to Van Daele, the whale had been dead several weeks; her body was in poor shape, with little fat.

Since 2019, hundreds of gray whales have died along North America's Pacific coastline, many appearing skinny or underfed.

Although researchers have not determined the cause of the die-off, there are ominous signs something is amiss in their high Arctic feeding grounds.

"We're used to change around here," said Alexus Kwatchka, a commercial fisherman who has navigated Alaskan waters for more than 30 years. He noted some years are cold, some are warm; sometimes all of the fish seem to be in one area for a few years, and then resettle elsewhere.

This fall has been extremely cold in Alaska; the town of Kotzebue, in the northwest, hit minus-31 degrees on Nov. 28—the record low for that date. This follows several years of record-setting warmth in the region.

What is new, said Kwatchka, is the persistence of this change. It's not like it gets super warm for one or two years and then goes back to normal, he said. Now the changes last, and he said he's encountering things he's never seen before—such as gray whales feeding along the beaches of Kodiak, or swimming in packs.

"Usually there are whales just scattered around the island," he said. "But I've seen them kind of bunched up and podded up, and I'm seeing them in places where I don't ordinarily see them."

In September, an emaciated young male gray whale was seen off a beach near Kodiak, behaving as though it were trying to feed, scooping material from the shallow shore bottom and filtering it through his baleen, a system many leviathans use to separate food from sand and water.

Three weeks later, that same young male washed ashore dead, not far from where he had been spotted previously.

Dozens of scientists validated Kwatchka's observations, describing these periods of intense ocean heat and cooling as "stanzas," which are growing more extreme and lasting longer than those of the past.

That's a problem, said Duffy-Anderson, because the longer you stress a system, the deeper and broader the impacts—and therefore the harder for it to bounce back.

While it's always possible the current stanza is temporary and the ecosystem could reset itself, "that is unlikely," said Rick Thoman, an Alaska climate specialist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Due to atmospheric warming, the world's oceans hold so much excess heat that it's improbable the Chukchi Sea will ever be covered again with thick, multiyear ice, he said. Nor will we see many more years where the spring ice extends across the Bering, he said.

Even though Nome saw one of its coldest Novembers in 100 years of record keeping, and King Salmon—a town of roughly 300 near Katmai National Park and Preserve—recorded its all-time lowest November temperatures, "the escalator of warming is going up," Thoman said.

He conjured up an image of a 5-year-old running up and down an ascending escalator. "Somebody standing off of the escalator might say, oh, it looks like the kid is going down. But as we know, the escalator is continuing to go up."

"What we've seen in the Bering Sea in recent years is," he added, "unprecedented."

***

Lee Cooper and Jackie Grebmeier, researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, have visited these waters every year since the 1980s, when they were graduate students at the University of Alaska. Their initial proposal centered on one basic question: What makes these Arctic-like waters of the northern Bering Sea so productive?

It was tough work. So much of the ocean was frozen, and therefore inaccessible. Other researchers faced the same challenge.

"When we started out, we couldn't get north into the Bering Strait area because of ice until mid-June," said Kathy Kuletz, a bird biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who has been researching the northern Bering Sea and high Arctic since 2006 and studying Alaskan birds since 1978. "Even then, it wasn't until late June that you could get into the Chukchi. And that's certainly not been the issue ... since, let's see, about 2015 or so."

Researchers are focused on ice—or the lack of it—because the frozen ocean is the foundation of the region's rich ecosystems. It not only keeps the waters beneath it cool, but a layer of algae grows on the underside of these ice sheets—the key to the entire food web.

For eons, as the sun moved south in autumn and the temperatures dropped in the high latitudes, Arctic sea ice thickened near the North Pole. At its edges, it reached its frosty fingers into the inlets along the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, winding its way south through the Bering Strait and into the northern Bering Sea. By March, the northern Bering Sea was typically a vast field of white ice, its edges marked by broken sheets that had been pushed into a vertical position by whipping winds and churning currents below.

But for the last 50 years, as the region's warm stanzas have increased in duration and intensity, that seasonal ice has dwindled.

A 2020 study published in the journal Science documented a reduction in ice extent unlike any other in the last 5,500 years: Its extent in 2018 and 2019 was 60% to 70% lower than the historical average. In an Arctic report card released just this week, federal scientists called the region's changes "alarming and undeniable."

Long before the sea was named for the 18th century Danish cartographer and Russian naval explorer Vitus Jonassen Bering, the icy water body consisted of two distinct ecosystems—one subarctic, the other resembling the high Arctic. Fish in the subarctic zone—such as Pacific cod—were deterred by the frigid temperatures of the cold pool, which hover just below 32 degrees. But other fish—such as Arctic cod, capelin and flatfish—evolved to thrive in this environment, with the cold pool serving as a protective barrier.

Now that "thermal force field" has all but vanished.

Lyle Britt, director of the Resource Assessment and Conservation Engineering division of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, leads annual trawl surveys in the Bering Sea, part of a U.S. effort to systematically monitor commercial fish populations and their ecosystems. The federal government has conducted a survey of the eastern Bering Sea every year since 1982—with the exception of 2020, when COVID grounded the personnel and boats. Federal surveying of the northern Bering Sea began in 2010 amid concerns about the loss of seasonal sea ice; the government has surveyed it a total of five times.

With each survey, Britt and his mariner colleagues navigate the sea as if tracing over the same piece of graph paper, year after year, with 520 evenly dispersed stations at 20-mile intervals. At each one—376 in the eastern Bering Sea and 144 in the northern Bering Sea—they stop to collect environmental data, such as bottom- and surface-water temperatures, as well as a sampling of fish and invertebrates, which they count and weigh.

Data from a Bering Sea mooring shows the average temperature throughout the water column has risen markedly in the last several years: in 2018, water temperatures were 9 degrees above the historical average.

Not only have the scientists noticed, so too have the fish.

Consider the plight of the walleye pollock—also known as Alaska pollock—one of the region's most important fisheries.

While adult walleye pollock are averse to super cold water, juveniles are known to gravitate to the interior of the cold pool. In this protective chilly dome, the young fish are not only walled off from cold-hating predators, but as their metabolisms slow in the frigid temperatures, they can gorge on and grow from the Arctic ecosystem's fatty, rich food sources.

With the cold pool gone, "there's no refuge" for small fish seeking to grow big, said Duffy-Anderson. "Instead, the adult fish can now move into those spaces."

So what has happened to the Arctic fish? Have they just moved north, following the cold water?

It's not that simple, said Britt. The northern Bering Sea is very shallow. When ice is not there to cover it, it warms up quickly—and can exceed temperatures detected in the subarctic southern Bering Sea.

"So we don't fully understand all the implications of why the fish are moving in the directions and patterns that they are," he said. But in some places—particularly the places that once harbored cold-loving fish such as Arctic cod and capelin—they are just gone.

In a healthy Arctic system, thousands of bottom-dwelling species—bottom fish, clams, crabs and shrimp-like critters—feast on the lipid-rich algae that falls from the ice to the bottom of the sea. But in a warm-water system, the algae gets taken up in the water column, said Duffy-Anderson.

The healthy system is highly energy-efficient—with sediment-dwelling invertebrates and bottom fish feeding on the rain of algae, and then birds and large-bodied mammals, such as walrus and whales, scooping them up.

"One of the things I'm really concerned about is ... that the whole food web dynamic kind of comes apart," she said. As warmer waters and animals infiltrate the system, "you put more links in the food chain, and then less and less of that energy is transferred efficiently. And that is what we're beginning to see."

Ice is also essential habitat for some Arctic mammals. As with gray whales, several types of ice seals—which include ringed, spotted and bearded seals—started showing up skinny or dead around the Chukchi and Bering seas in 2018, spurring a federal investigation. These Arctic-dwelling species rely on sea ice to pup, nurse and molt. Without it, they spend more time in the cold water, where they expend too much energy. Young seals are particularly vulnerable; their chances for survival plummet without the ice, said the Alaska Fisheries Science Center's Boveng.

There are also reports of killer whales—also known as orcas— showing up in areas they haven't been spotted before, feeding on beluga whales, bowheads and narwhals, said Giles, the University of Washington orca researcher.

"They are finding channels and openings through the ice, and in some cases preying on animals that have never seen killer whales before," she said.

Climate scientists worldwide have long warned that as the planet warms, humans and wildlife will become more vulnerable to infectious diseases previously confined to certain locations and environments. That dynamic could be a factor in the massive die-off of birds in the Bering Sea—experts estimate at least tens of thousands of birds have died there since 2013.

The culprit was avian cholera, a disease not previously detected in these high latitudes, and one that elsewhere rarely fells seabirds such as thick-billed murres, auklets, common eiders, northern fulmars and gulls.

Toxic algae associated with warmer waters has also been detected in a few dead birds (and some healthy birds) in the Bering Sea, said Robb Kaler, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—and may have been responsible for the death of a person living on St. Lawrence Island.

Kuletz, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist who has been observing birds in Alaska since the late 1970s, said she's never before seen the large-scale changes of recent years. In 2013, the dead birds did not show signs of being emaciated, but in 2017, hundreds to thousands more began to wash up dead on beaches with clear signs of starvation, she said.

"There've always been little peaks" of die-offs that would last a year or so, but then things would go back to normal, she said. "These animals are resilient. They can forgo breeding if they aren't getting enough nutrition."

Not all bird species are suffering. Albatross, which are surface feeders, are booming, underscoring for Kuletz the idea that there could be "winners and losers" in the changing region. Albatross do not nest in Alaska. They only come in the summer to feed, and are therefore not tied to eggs or nests while looking for food.

Yet for some scientists, it isn't easy to reconcile how a system in balance could so quickly go off the rails, even if some species adapt and thrive as others struggle.

"For me, it's actually very emotional," said Thoman, the University of Alaska climate specialist, recalling his elementary school days, when he read Jack London's "To Build a Fire" and other stories from the Arctic.

"The environment that he described, the environment that I saw going through National Geographics in the 1970s? That environment doesn't exist anymore."

Melted Alaska sea ice alarms coast residents, scientists

©2021 Los Angeles Times.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Scientists Have Cultivated a “Miracle Microbe” That Converts Oil Into Methane

By MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR MARINE MICROBIOLOGY DECEMBER 23, 2021


Scientists have succeeded in cultivating an archaeon that converts oil into methane. They describe how the microbe achieves the transformation and that it prefers to eat rather bulky chunks of food.

Microorganisms can convert oil into natural gas, i.e. methane. Until recently, it was thought that this conversion was only possible through the cooperation of different organisms. In 2019, Rafael Laso-Pérez and Gunter Wegener from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology suggested that a special archaeon can do this all by itself, as indicated by their genome analyses. Now, in collaboration with a team from China, the researchers have succeeded in cultivating this “miracle microbe” in the laboratory. This enabled them to describe exactly how the microbe achieves the transformation. They also discovered that it prefers to eat rather bulky chunks of food.



In an oil field like this, Gunter Wegener and his colleagues found the microorganisms that now also live in their laboratory. Genetic information shows that they are widespread and even live in the deep sea. Credit: Yoshi Canopus

Un­der­ground oil de­pos­its on land and in the sea are home to mi­croor­gan­isms that use the oil as a source of en­ergy and food, con­vert­ing it into meth­ane. Un­til re­cently, it was thought that this con­ver­sion was only pos­sible in a com­plic­ated team­work between dif­fer­ent or­gan­isms: cer­tain bac­teria and usu­ally two ar­chaeal part­ners. Now the re­search­ers have man­aged to cul­tiv­ate an ar­chaeon called Meth­an­ol­i­paria from a set­tling tank of an oil pro­duc­tion fa­cil­ity that handles this com­plex re­ac­tion all by it­self.

Enzymes just in case

This “mir­acle mi­crobe” breaks down oil into meth­ane (CH4) and car­bon di­ox­ide (CO2). “Meth­an­ol­i­paria is a kind of hy­brid creature that com­bines the prop­er­ties of an oil de­grader with those of a meth­ano­gen, i.e. a meth­ane pro­du­cer,” ex­plains study au­thor Gunter We­gener from the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Mar­ine Mi­cro­bi­o­logy and the MARUM – Cen­ter for Mar­ine En­vir­on­mental Sci­ences at the Uni­versity of Bre­men.


Image from the epifluorescence microscope: Methanoliparia cells (green) from the laboratory cultures. The oil droplet that the archaea colonized can be seen as a reddish glow. The red dots display rare bacteria in the culture. Credit: Rafael Laso-Pérez/Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology; from: Zhou et al., Nature, 2021

Now that the re­search­ers have suc­ceeded in cul­tiv­at­ing these mi­croor­gan­isms in the labor­at­ory, they were able to in­vest­ig­ate the un­der­ly­ing pro­cesses in de­tail. They dis­covered that its ge­netic make-up gives Meth­an­ol­i­paria unique cap­ab­il­it­ies. “In its genes it car­ries the blue­prints for en­zymes that can ac­tiv­ate and de­com­pose vari­ous hy­dro­car­bons. In ad­di­tion, it also has the com­plete gear kit of a meth­ane pro­du­cer,” says We­gener.

New pathway of methanogenesis

In their labor­at­ory cul­tures, the re­search­ers offered the mi­crobes vari­ous kinds of food and used a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent meth­ods to keep a close eye on how Meth­an­ol­i­paria deal with it. What was par­tic­u­larly sur­pris­ing to see was that this ar­chaeon ac­tiv­ated all the dif­fer­ent hy­dro­car­bons with one and the same en­zyme. “So far, we have only cul­tiv­ated ar­chaea that live on short-chain hy­dro­car­bons such as eth­ane or bu­tane. Meth­an­ol­i­paria, on the other hand, prefers heavy oil with its long-chain com­pounds,” says co-au­thor Ra­fael Laso-Pérez, who now works at Spain’s Na­tional Cen­ter for Bi­o­tech­no­logy (CNB).

“Meth­ano­genic mi­crobes that use long-chain hy­dro­car­bons dir­ectly – we did­n’t know these ex­is­ted un­til now. Even com­plic­ated hy­dro­car­bons with ring-like or aro­matic struc­tures are not too bulky for Meth­an­ol­i­paria, at least if they are bound to at least one longer car­bon chain. This means that be­sides our other ex­cit­ing res­ults we have also found a pre­vi­ously com­pletely un­known path­way of meth­ano­gen­esis.”


It doesn’t look like much, but it’s full of surprises: Bottles like these harbor the cultures of Methanoliparia. Credit: Lei Cheng

Detectable from the oil tank to the deep sea

The Meth­an­ol­i­paria cells cul­tured for the present study ori­gin­ate from one of Chin­a’s largest oil fields, the Shengli oil field. However, ge­netic ana­lyses show that these mi­crobes are dis­trib­uted all over the world, even down to the deep sea. “Our res­ults hold an en­tirely new un­der­stand­ing of oil ex­ploit­a­tion in sub­sur­face oil reser­voirs. Both the wide dis­tri­bu­tion of these or­gan­isms and the po­ten­tial in­dus­trial ap­plic­a­tions make this an ex­cit­ing field of re­search in the com­ing years,” We­gener con­cludes.

Reference: “Non-syntrophic methanogenic hydrocarbon degradation by an archaeal species” by Zhuo Zhou, Cui-jing Zhang, Peng-fei Liu, Lin Fu, Rafael Laso-Pérez, Lu Yang, Li-ping Bai, Jiang Li, Min Yang, Jun-zhang Lin, Wei-dong Wang, Gunter Wegener, Meng Li and Lei Cheng, 22 December 2021, Nature.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04235-2