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The missing 45%: The role of circularity within climate disclosure

By Aditi Bhatkhande

March 18, 2022

There needs to be more consistency when it comes to how circularity metrics are expressed as part of corporate climate disclosures. Image via Shutterstock

ESG disclosure is rising in priority among corporate sustainability agendas — just look at the number of jobs available on LinkedIn. Simultaneously, it’s becoming more well-known that transitioning to a circular economy — pursuing economic activities that minimize waste and regenerate nature — is critical in eliminating the 45 percent of emissions that arise from how products are made, used and discarded. What is lacking is standardized measurement and disclosure about how companies are using circular initiatives to combat the impacts of climate change.

For each company pursuing circular strategies, the vocabulary differs. A closer evaluation of companies’ public reporting around their circularity efforts shows that how companies strategize for circularity, measure progress and report on the impact delivered is ad hoc and inconsistent. Research shows that companies’ definitions of what makes a "circular economy" varies significantly: Phillips sees a circular economy as keeping products, parts, and materials at their highest utility and value as they circulate between customers, while its competitor LG describes a circular economy as "eco-friendly social contribution programs aimed at establishing a healthy future."

The result? Conflicting and incomparable data about measurable circularity progress. With companies largely determining their own metrics and successes, achieving circularity becomes a self-serving effort. Any disclosure towards this end would fail to capture accurate circularity-related risks and opportunities facing companies.

When we think about optimizing the role of corporate environmental disclosure, we turn to the acronym soup of ESG standards and frameworks. Do ESG scores effectively measure climate progress? Likely not. But they do accelerate environmental data collection, a crucial first step in decarbonizing our economies. However, a survey of leading ESG reporting standards and organizations shows that circular economy topics rarely make an appearance in the questionnaires, frameworks or guidance of such organizations.

Let’s take corporate reports to CDP as an example. Companies can use their CDP disclosure to convey how circularity fits within their climate-related risks and opportunities, Scope 3 calculation approaches and supply chain engagement strategies, while aiming to tie such disclosure to business priorities. But the method in which they do differs. Considering Scope 3 disclosures, for instance, companies’ emissions calculations approaches vary from conducting life-cycle assessments, multiplying product weight by emissions factors or citing estimations based on scientific literature or independent calculations.

Managing and recapturing waste is a critical component of circularity strategies. But "waste" within CDP Scope 3 disclosure, even among similar companies, could imply anything from discarded paper to hazardous materials, and rarely do companies clarify these classifications.

How do you hold companies accountable for tackling those 45 percent of emissions related to making and disposing products, if there is no comprehensive guidance on what is expected of them?

As the space of ESG disclosure evolves, circularity should move away from being an aspiration listed on the company’s website to being a core framework for measuring its comprehensive climate progress.

The focus of reporting organizations such as CDP has been to encourage companies to provide transparency around a set of key environmental metrics, while allowing them the flexibility to also report on environmental topics relevant to them. But most reporting organizations do not yet encourage companies to consider the relevance or materiality of a circular economy to their business model. Nor do they require clarity about how companies’ circularity initiatives tie to their emissions reduction targets, overarching environmental goals or business priorities.

CDP acknowledges the role of "circular thinking" in addressing the climate crisis within its 2021-25 strategy, but given the spikes in interest around circularity, that strategy seems out of sync.

Beyond reporting organizations, measuring corporate performance on circularity has drawn interest from several circularity-related nonprofits and those within academia. Yet, research has shown that there are currently no uniform or scalable approaches from nonprofits in the circularity space that support or encourage the inclusion of circularity information within ESG disclosure.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s (EMF) tools — Circulytics and Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) — are among the leading options available to companies that offer a company-level assessment on circularity progress. However, there is no guidance or incentive for companies to publicly disclose on the assessment they receive from EMF or on the corresponding measures the company is taking to improve its performance.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Circular Transition Indicators (CTI) provides companies with a framework for decision-making around circularity as well as identifying strategies in communicating with stakeholders and value chain partners. While WBCSD’s work is the most far-reaching effort so far, the framework and the self-assessment tool largely target companies receiving inquiries from value chain partners. Therefore, a limited number of companies see an incentive to incorporate the framework within their external reporting strategies.

Yes, a lot of companies use their independent sustainability reports to outline their approach and progress towards circularity, and many might do so consistently each year. So, credit where credit’s due. However, a closer look at these reports shows that there is minimal commentary about the decision-making that went into picking a company’s circularity initiatives. How was it decided which products should be kept "in the loop" vs. phased out? Is landfilling being completely avoided or simply delayed?

[Continue the dialogue on how to build a circular economy with forward-thinking leaders at Circularity 22, taking place in Atlanta, GA, May 17-19.]

Questions such as these are important because researchers have observed that increasing material circularity doesn’t necessarily lead to decreasing environmental impact, as it could shift emissions and create new hotspots that could lead to large shifts of the environmental burden instead of mitigating it. Rarely do companies’ sustainability reports touch on addressing such rebound effects of circularity initiatives.

Additionally, creating a circular economy means more than ensuring products are recyclable. Creating a circular economy also means redesigning products to eliminate waste, transitioning to innovative business models focused on reuse, creating better jobs and preventing biodiversity loss. Reporting only on how recyclable a company’s products are is a missed opportunity for showcasing the widespread benefits of circular initiatives to a business.

Each player in the reporting landscape has work to do, but it might be helpful to do this work together. Initiatives for collecting circularity data by nonprofits such as EMF and WBCSD have been promising. ESG reporting organizations can benefit from partnering with such circularity experts, to ensure their current questionnaires and standards accurately capture how circularity is helping companies combat climate change.

As for the companies implementing circularity initiatives, data collection about the comprehensive impacts that circularity can have on a business should be at the top of the sustainability manager’s to-do list. But such disclosure cannot exist as a standalone report. If companies are looking to improve their circularity disclosure, the goal should be to leverage existing reporting mechanisms to include data on how robust the company’s circularity strategy is and how closely it integrates with sustainability and business priorities.

As the space of ESG disclosure evolves, circularity should move away from being an aspiration listed on the company’s website to being a core framework for measuring its comprehensive climate progress.

"The circular economy is needed to get to net-zero emissions"  

Ellen MacArthur | 18 March 2022  Leave a comment

Designers and brands must go beyond recycling and focus on making bigger, systems-level changes to help the world move to a circular economy and ultimately reach its net-zero goals, says Ellen MacArthur.

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Today, we use the equivalent of 1.6 Earths a year to provide the resources we use and absorb our waste. This means it takes the planet one year and eight months to regenerate what we use in a single year.

Much like running up financial debts, which can result in bankruptcy, when we draw down too much stock from our natural environment without ensuring and encouraging its recovery, we run the risk of local, regional and eventually global ecosystem collapse. The circular economy is a way to solve this by decoupling economic growth from the consumption of finite resources.

It's about redesigning products, services and the way our businesses work to shift our whole economy from one that is locked into a take-make-waste system to one that eliminates waste, circulates products and materials, and regenerates nature.

Designers must go way beyond simply rethinking how they make individual products

 

The circular economy gives us a framework that can help to solve our biggest global challenges at the same time. And the last two years have seen circular design and innovation rapidly increasing, pretty much everywhere.

Around the world, we are seeing more and more businesses use the circular economy to change the way they work and tackle the root causes of climate change, biodiversity loss, waste and pollution.

However, to drive action forward, it is crucial that we focus upstream to prevent waste before it is created. Designers must go way beyond simply rethinking how they make individual products and consider the entire system that surrounds them.

Read:

Six fashion brands pushing circular design beyond recycling

This includes the business models, the ways in which customers access products and what happens to those products when we have finished with them, so we can keep the materials in the system for as long as possible.

The opportunities are clear and renewed ambition levels from 2021 are positive but shifting the system is a challenge. We need scale and we need it quickly.

Some very strong examples of designers and big companies innovating for a circular future are featured in the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's recent study, which focused on rethinking business models for a thriving fashion industry.

Innovation continues to ramp up as the world seeks solutions to plastic pollution

Research revealed that by maximising the potential of economic and environmental impacts, circular business models in sectors such as rental, resale, remake and repair have the potential to claim 23 per cent of the global fashion market by 2030 and grasp a $700 billion opportunity.

The study cites tangible examples of how businesses such as [luxury resale platform] The RealReal and Rent the Runway (RTR), among many others, are innovating to embrace circular models.

In other industries, we are seeing refurbished electronics as a growing space. This January, Back Market – a Paris-based business that refurbishes iPhones – was valued at $5.7 billion, making it France's most valuable startup.

Innovation continues to ramp up as the world seeks solutions to plastic pollution. But invariably, this market faces a lot of its own barriers. Efforts concentrating on downstream solutions such as recycling are undoubtedly a necessary component.

But we need to ensure that we eliminate all problematic and unnecessary plastic items, innovate to ensure that the plastics we do need are reusable, recyclable or compostable, and circulate all the plastic items we use to keep them in the economy and out of the environment.

Read:

Architects and designers "absolutely vital" in shift to circular economy says Ellen MacArthur

The circular economy is needed to get to net-zero emissions. While 55 per cent of emissions can be tackled by the transition to renewable energy, the remaining 45 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions come from the way we make and use products and food, and manage land.

To deliver the climate and biodiversity benefits of a circular economy, businesses and governments must work together to change the system, and this means redesigning the way we make and use products and food. This shift will give us the power to not only reduce waste, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions but also to grow prosperity, jobs, and resilience.

We are continuing to witness an abundance of positive circular innovation centred at tackling climate change – not least UK-based Winnow, which works to reduce food waste through data and now saves 61,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year. Our next steps must be to ensure that continuing innovation is supported and enabled to accelerate and scale.

We need to work together to create a system that allows us all to make better choices

Transitioning to the circular economy requires all stakeholders across systems to play their part. The role of all businesses, regardless of size, is vital if we are to find new, circular ways of creating, delivering and capturing value that also benefits society and the environment. No one can say how long this transformation will take, but what we can say is that it is already well underway.

We need businesses and governments to work together to create a system that allows us all to make better choices, choices that are part of the solution to global challenges rather than part of the problem.

Ellen MacArthur is a former round-the-world sailor, who retired from yachting to launch the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in 2010. Dedicated to accelerating the shift towards a circular economy, the charity has partnered with some of the biggest brands in the world and published a number of influential reports on plastic pollution and textile waste, alongside practical guides on how to design products and garments in a more circular way.

Our universe may have a twin that runs backward in time

By Paul Sutter 

An anti-universe running backwards in time could explain dark matter and cosmic inflation.

If the universe has a twin and on that twin time runs backward, then scientists could explain dark matter. 

(Image credit: MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images)

A wild new theory suggests there may be another "anti-universe," running backward in time prior to the Big Bang.

The idea assumes that the early universe was small, hot and dense — and so uniform that time looks symmetric going backward and forward.

If true, the new theory means that dark matter isn't so mysterious; it's just a new flavor of a ghostly particle called a neutrino that can only exist in this kind of universe. And the theory implies there would be no need for a period of "inflation" that rapidly expanded the size of the young cosmos soon after the Big Bang.

If true, then future experiments to hunt for gravitational waves, or to pin down the mass of neutrinos, could answer once and for all whether this mirror anti-universe exists.

Preserving symmetry

Physicists have identified a set of fundamental symmetries in nature. The three most important symmetries are: charge (if you flip the charges of all the particles involved in an interaction to their opposite charge, you'll get the same interaction); parity (if you look at the mirror image of an interaction, you get the same result); and time (if you run an interaction backward in time, it looks the same).

Physical interactions obey most of these symmetries most of the time, which means that there are sometimes violations. But physicists have never observed a violation of a combination of all three symmetries at the same time. If you take every single interaction observed in nature and flip the charges, take the mirror image, and run it backward in time, those interactions behave exactly the same.

This fundamental symmetry is given a name: CPT symmetry, for charge (C), parity (P) and time (T).

Related: What is multiverse theory?

In a new paper recently accepted for publication in the journal Annals of Physics, scientists propose extending this combined symmetry. Usually this symmetry only applies to interactions — the forces and fields that make up the physics of the cosmos. But perhaps, if this is such an incredibly important symmetry, it applies to the whole entire universe itself. In other words, this idea extends this symmetry from applying to just the "actors" of the universe (forces and fields) to the "stage" itself, the entire physical object of the universe.

Creating dark matter

We live in an expanding universe. This universe is filled with lots of particles doing lots of interesting things, and the evolution of the universe moves forward in time. If we extend the concept of CPT symmetry to our entire cosmos, then our view of the universe can't be the entire picture.

Instead, there must be more. To preserve the CPT symmetry throughout the cosmos, there must be a mirror-image cosmos that balances out our own. This cosmos would have all opposite charges than we have, be flipped in the mirror, and run backward in time. Our universe is just one of a twin. Taken together, the two universes obey CPT symmetry.

The study researchers next asked what the consequences of such a universe would be.

They found many wonderful things.

For one, a CPT-respecting universe naturally expands and fills itself with particles, without the need for a long-theorized period of rapid expansion known as inflation. While there's a lot of evidence that an event like inflation occurred, the theoretical picture of that event is incredibly fuzzy. It's so fuzzy that there is plenty of room for proposals of viable alternatives.

Second, a CPT-respecting universe would add some additional neutrinos to the mix. There are three known neutrino flavors: the electron-neutrino, muon-neutrino and tau-neutrino. Strangely, all three of these neutrino flavors are left-handed (referring to the direction of its spin relative to its motion). All other particles known to physics have both left- and right-handed varieties, so physicists have long wondered if there are additional right-handed neutrinos.

A CPT-respecting universe would demand the existence of at least one right-handed neutrino species. This species would be largely invisible to physics experiments, only ever influencing the rest of the universe through gravity.

But an invisible particle that floods the universe and only interacts via gravity sounds a lot like dark matter.

The researchers found that the conditions imposed by obeying CPT symmetry would fill our universe with right-handed neutrinos, enough to account for the dark matter.

Predictions in the mirror

We would never have access to our twin, the CPT-mirror universe, because it exists "behind" our Big Bang, before the beginning of our cosmos. But that doesn't mean we can't test this idea.

The researchers found a few observational consequences of this idea. For one, they predict that the three known left-handed neutrino species should all be Majorana particles, which means that they are their own antiparticles (in contrast to normal particles like the electron, which have antimatter counterparts called the positrons). As of now, physicists aren't sure if neutrinos have this property or not.

Additionally, they predict that one of the neutrino species should be massless. Currently, physicists can only place upper limits on the neutrino masses. If physicists can ever conclusively measure the neutrino masses, and one of them is indeed massless, that would greatly bolster the idea of a CPT-symmetric universe.

Lastly, in this model the event of inflation never occurred. Instead, the universe filled with particles naturally on its own. Physicists believe that inflation shook space-time to such a tremendous degree that it flooded the cosmos with gravitational waves. Many experiments are on the hunt for these primordial gravitational waves. But in a CPT-symmetric universe, no such waves should exist. So if those searches for primordial gravitational waves turn up empty, that might be a clue that this CPT-mirror universe model is correct.

Originally published on Live Science.

Paul Sutter
Astrophysicist
Paul M. Sutter is a research professor in astrophysics at SUNY Stony Brook University and the Flatiron Institute in New York City. He regularly appears on TV and podcasts, including "Ask a Spaceman." He is the author of two books, "Your Place in the Universe" and "How to Die in Space," and is a regular contributor to Space.com, Live Science, and more. Paul received his PhD in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2011, and spent three years at the Paris Institute of Astrophysics, followed by a research fellowship in Trieste, Italy.

Hubble Space Telescope Captures a “Five-Star” Rated Gravitational Lens

By ESA/HUBBLE MARCH 20, 2022

The Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of galaxy cluster SDSS J1004+4112 as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The image is the first-ever picture of a single distant quasar lensed into five images and also shows a rich abundance of banana-like arcs from lends background galaxies and even a supernova. Credit: European Space Agency, NASA, Keren Sharon (Tel-Aviv University) and Eran Ofek (CalTech)

This full-size Hubble image shows galaxy cluster SDSS J1004+4112 that was discovered as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. It is one of the more distant clusters known (seven billion light-years, redshift z=0.68), and is seen when the Universe was half its present age. The image is the first-ever picture of a single distant quasar lensed into five images and also shows a rich abundance of banana-like arcs from lends background galaxies and even a supernova. Four of the five quasar images are seen as star-like images surrounding the center of the cluster. The fifth quasar image is embedded to the right of the core of the central galaxy in the cluster.

Inexpensive New COVID-19 Vaccine Could Be Accessible for More of the World

By ANNE TRAFTON, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MARCH 19, 2022

A new protein subunit vaccine developed at MIT and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center may offer an inexpensive, easy-to-store, and effective alternative to RNA vaccines for Covid-19. Pictured is a schematic of the vaccine. Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT, and figures courtesy of the researchers

The protein subunit vaccine, which can be manufactured using engineered yeast, has shown promise in preclinical studies.

While many people in wealthier countries have been vaccinated against Covid-19, there is still a need for vaccination in much of the world. A new vaccine developed at MIT and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center may aid in those efforts, offering an inexpensive, easy-to-store, and effective alternative to RNA vaccines.

In a new paper, the researchers report that the vaccine, which comprises fragments of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein arrayed on a virus-like particle, elicited a strong immune response and protected animals against viral challenge.

The vaccine was designed so that it can be produced by yeast, using fermentation facilities that already exist around the world. The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines, is now producing large quantities of the vaccine and plans to run a clinical trial in Africa.

“There’s still a very large population that does not have access to Covid vaccines. Protein-based subunit vaccines are a low-cost, well-established technology that can provide a consistent supply and is accepted in many parts of the world,” says J. Christopher Love, the Raymond A. and Helen E. St. Laurent Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard.

Love and Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and a professor at Harvard Medical School, are the senior authors of the paper, which was published on March 16, 2022, in Science Advances. The paper’s lead authors are MIT graduate students Neil Dalvie and Sergio Rodriguez-Aponte, and Lisa Tostanoski, a postdoc at BIDMC.

Optimizing manufacturability

Love’s lab, working closely with Barouch’s lab at BIDMC, began working on a Covid-19 vaccine in early 2020. Their goal was to produce a vaccine that would be not only effective but also easy to manufacture. To that end, they focused on protein subunit vaccines, a type of vaccine that consists of small pieces of viral proteins. Several existing vaccines, including one for hepatitis B, have been made using this approach.

“In places in the world where cost remains a challenge, subunit vaccines can address that. They could also address some of the hesitancy around vaccines based on newer technologies,” Love says.

Another advantage of protein subunit vaccines is that they can often be stored under refrigeration and do not require the ultracold storage temperatures that RNA vaccines do.

For their subunit vaccine, the researchers decided to use a small piece of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, the receptor-binding domain (RBD). Early in the pandemic, studies in animals suggested that this protein fragment alone would not produce a strong immune response, so to make it more immunogenic, the team decided to display many copies of the protein on a virus-like particle. They chose the hepatitis B surface antigen as their scaffold, and showed that when coated with SARS-CoV-2 RBD fragments this particle generated a much stronger response than the RBD protein on its own.

The researchers also wanted to ensure that their vaccine could be manufactured easily and efficiently. Many protein subunit vaccines are manufactured using mammalian cells, which can be more difficult to work with. The MIT team designed the RBD protein so that it could be produced by the yeast Pichia pastoris, which is relatively easy to grow in an industrial bioreactor.

Each of the two vaccine components — the RBD protein fragment and the hepatitis B particle — can be produced separately in yeast. To each component, the researchers added a specialized peptide tag that binds with a tag found on the other component, allowing RBD fragments to be attached to the virus particles after each is produced.

Pichia pastoris is already used to produce vaccines in bioreactors around the world. Once the researchers had their engineered yeast cells ready, they sent them to the Serum Institute, which ramped up production rapidly.

“One of the key things that separates our vaccine from other vaccines is that the facilities to manufacture vaccines in these yeast organisms already exist in parts of the world where the vaccines are still most needed today,” Dalvie says.

A modular process

Once the researchers had their vaccine candidate ready, they tested it in a small trial in nonhuman primates. For those studies, they combined the vaccine with adjuvants that are already used in other vaccines: either aluminum hydroxide (alum) or a combination of alum and another adjuvant called CpG.

In those studies, the researchers showed that the vaccine generated antibody levels similar to those produced by some of the approved Covid-19 vaccines, including the Johnson and Johnson vaccine. They also found that when the animals were exposed to SARS-CoV-2, viral loads in vaccinated animals were much lower than those seen in unvaccinated animals.

For that vaccine, the researchers used an RBD fragment that was based on the sequence of the original SARS-CoV-2 strain that emerged in late 2019. That vaccine has been tested in a phase 1 clinical trial in Australia. Since then, the researchers have incorporated two mutations (similar to ones identified in the natural Delta and Lambda variants) that the team previously found to improve production and immunogenicity compared to the ancestral sequence, for the planned phase 1/2 clinical trials.

The approach of attaching an immunogen RBD to a virus-like particle offers a “plug and display”-like system that could be used to create similar vaccines, the researchers say.

“We could make mutations that were seen in some of the new variants, add them to the RBD but keep the whole framework the same, and make new vaccine candidates,” Rodriguez-Aponte says. “That shows the modularity of the process and how efficiently you can edit and make new candidates.”

If the clinical trials show that the vaccine provides a safe and effective alternative to existing RNA vaccines, the researchers hope that it could not only prove useful for vaccinating people in countries that currently have limited access to vaccines, but also enable the creation of boosters that would offer protection against a wider variety of SARS-CoV-2 strains or other coronaviruses.

“In principle, this modularity does allow for consideration of adapting to new variants or providing a more pan-coronavirus protective booster,” Love says.

Reference: “SARS-CoV-2 receptor binding domain displayed on HBsAg virus–like particles elicits protective immunity in macaques” by Neil C. Dalvie, Lisa H. Tostanoski, Sergio A. Rodriguez-Aponte, Kawaljit Kaur, Sakshi Bajoria, Ozan S. Kumru, Amanda J. Martinot, Abishek Chandrashekar, Katherine McMahan, Noe B. Mercado, Jingyou Yu, Aiquan Chang, Victoria M. Giffin, Felix Nampanya, Shivani Patel, Lesley Bowman, Christopher A. Naranjo, Dongsoo Yun, Zach Flinchbaugh, Laurent Pessaint, Renita Brown, Jason Velasco, Elyse Teow, Anthony Cook, Hanne Andersen, Mark G. Lewis, Danielle L. Camp, Judith Maxwell Silverman, Gaurav S. Nagar, Harish D. Rao, Rakesh R. Lothe, Rahul Chandrasekharan, Meghraj P. Rajurkar, Umesh S. Shaligram, Harry Kleanthous, Sangeeta B. Joshi, David B. Volkin, Sumi Biswas, J. Christopher Love and Dan H. Barouch, 16 March 2022, Science Advances.
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abl6015

Researchers from the Serum Institute and SpyBiotech also contributed to the paper. The research was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Koch Institute Support (core) Grant from the National Cancer Institute.

New Study Highlights the Complex Impacts Multiple Disasters Have on Public Health

By UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE MARCH 19, 2022

There is a growing number of cases where communities experience more than one disaster – from bushfires, Covid-19 and flooding in Victoria to Tonga, which recently had a volcanic eruption and a tsunami. Credit: Tonga Geological Services

Findings from a review conducted by University of Melbourne researchers shows multiple disasters can have complex impacts on physical health, mental health, and well-being which go beyond what has been observed after single disasters.

The study reviewed all empirical research that could be identified on direct and indirect public health effects associated with experiencing multiple disasters and included 150 articles published globally.

Published recently in the Lancet Public Health, Dr. Claire Leppold and fellow University of Melbourne co-authors Professor Lisa Gibbs, Dr. Karen Block, Dr. Lennart Reifels, and Ms. Phoebe Quinn detail the ways multiple disaster exposures can impact physical health, mental health, wellbeing, and resilience. It also details indirect influences on health such as impacts on healthcare facilities, changes in risk perception and evacuation behaviors, and government responses to multiple disasters.

Most public health research in this field has been based on the premise of a single disaster occurring, but there is a growing number of cases where communities experience more than one disaster. For example, some communities across Victoria, Australia, experienced the 2019-20 Black Summer Bushfires, the COVID-19 pandemic from early 2020, and then major flooding events in 2021. International examples of multiple disaster exposures abound; most recently, the Hunga Tonga volcanic eruption which then led to a tsunami. Tonga now faces impacts from two types of disasters at the same time.

“To our knowledge, this is the first review of the public health implications of multiple disasters. This is an important topic given the projected increases in frequency and severity of disasters due to climate change, and the fact that many people ad communities are already experiencing multiple disasters,” Dr. Claire Leppold, the lead author of the study, said.

While some researchers have previously speculated that exposure to one disaster could have a positive effect of preparing people mentally for future disasters, Dr. Leppold said the review could not find any consistent evidence to support this.

“Our review finds evidence that risks of poor mental health and physical health outcomes tend to increase with each disaster experienced, highlighting a cumulative effect. These findings underscore the importance of developing further support for people and communities affected by multiple disasters, and for policy responses to reduce the likelihood of climate hazards leading to disasters.”

Dr. Leppold notes the complex nature of health and wellbeing impacts. “This review also identified, for example, mixed evidence on how experiencing multiple disasters can affect risk perception and evacuation decisions, which can affect public health in terms of non-evacuation or delayed evacuation. There is a need for more research in this area.”

Co-author Dr. Lennart Reifels said: “Research in the burgeoning area of multiple disaster exposures will be vital to informing the ways in which we can best assist affected communities and prepare public health systems to avert the future health risks and impacts of multiple disasters. This seminal review makes an important contribution by summarising the current state of the evidence on the public health consequences of multiple disaster exposures with a view to fostering future research and inform effective responses.”

Reference: “Public health implications of multiple disaster exposures” by Claire Leppold, PhD; Prof Lisa Gibbs, PhD; Karen Block, PhD; Lennart Reifels, PhD and Phoebe Quinn, MPH, 19 January 2022, Lancet Public Health.
DOI: 10.1016/S2468-2667(21)00255-3

Decades-Old Equation Upended: Ice Flow Is More Sensitive to Stress Than Previously Thought

By BECKY HAM, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MARCH 19, 2022

The rate of glacier ice flow is more sensitive to stress than previously calculated, according to a new study by MIT researchers that upends a decades’ old equation used to describe ice flow. Pictured is the Juneau ice field in Alaska. Credit: Joanna Millstein

Changes to a key ice flow equation could refine estimates of sea level rise.

The rate of glacier ice flow is more sensitive to stress than previously calculated, according to a new study by MIT researchers that upends a decades-old equation used to describe ice flow.

Stress in this case refers to the forces acting on Antarctic glaciers, which are primarily influenced by gravity that drags the ice down toward lower elevations. Viscous glacier ice flows “really similarly to honey,” explains Joanna Millstein, a PhD student in the Glacier Dynamics and Remote Sensing Group and lead author of the study. “If you squeeze honey in the center of a piece of toast, and it piles up there before oozing outward, that’s the exact same motion that’s happening for ice.”

The revision to the equation proposed by Millstein and her colleagues should improve models for making predictions about the ice flow of glaciers. This could help glaciologists predict how Antarctic ice flow might contribute to future sea level rise, although Millstein said the equation change is unlikely to raise estimates of sea level rise beyond the maximum levels already predicted under climate change models.

Joanna Millstein, pictured here in Western Greenland. Viscous glacier ice flows “really similarly to honey,” explains Millstein. Credit: Robert Hawley

“Almost all our uncertainties about sea level rise coming from Antarctica have to do with the physics of ice flow, though, so this will hopefully be a constraint on that uncertainty,” she says.

Other authors on the paper, published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment, include Brent Minchew, the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Professor in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, and Samuel Pegler, a university academic fellow at the University of Leeds.

Benefits of big data

The equation in question, called Glen’s Flow Law, is the most widely used equation to describe viscous ice flow. It was developed in 1958 by British scientist J.W. Glen, one of the few glaciologists working on the physics of ice flow in the 1950s, according to Millstein.

With relatively few scientists working in the field until recently, along with the remoteness and inaccessibility of most large glacier ice sheets, there were few attempts to calibrate Glen’s Flow Law outside the lab until recently. In the recent study, Millstein and her colleagues took advantage of a new wealth of satellite imagery over Antarctic ice shelves, the floating extensions of the continent’s ice sheet, to revise the stress exponent of the flow law.

Pictured is the Juneau ice field in Alaska. Credit: Joanna Millstein

“In 2002, this major ice shelf [Larsen B] collapsed in Antarctica, and all we have from that collapse is two satellite images that are a month apart,” she says. “Now, over that same area we can get [imagery] every six days.”

The new analysis shows that “the ice flow in the most dynamic, fastest-changing regions of Antarctica — the ice shelves, which basically hold back and hug the interior of the continental ice — is more sensitive to stress than commonly assumed,” Millstein says. She’s optimistic that the growing record of satellite data will help capture rapid changes on Antarctica in the future, providing insights into the underlying physical processes of glaciers.

But stress isn’t the only thing that affects ice flow, the researchers note. Other parts of the flow law equation represent differences in temperature, ice grain size and orientation, and impurities and water contained in the ice — all of which can alter flow velocity. Factors like temperature could be especially important in understanding how ice flow impacts sea level rise in the future, Millstein says.

Cracking under strain

Millstein and colleagues are also studying the mechanics of ice sheet collapse, which involves different physical models than those used to understand the ice flow problem. “The cracking and breaking of ice is what we’re working on now, using strain rate observations,” Millstein says.

The researchers use InSAR, radar images of the Earth’s surface collected by satellites, to observe deformations of the ice sheets that can be used to make precise measurements of strain. By observing areas of ice with high strain rates, they hope to better understand the rate at which crevasses and rifts propagate to trigger collapse.

Reference: “Ice viscosity is more sensitive to stress than commonly assumed” by Joanna D. Millstein, Brent M. Minchew and Samuel S. Pegler, 10 March 2022, Nature Communications Earth and Environment.
DOI: 10.1038/s43247-022-00385-x

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation.