Thursday, October 17, 2024


Climate change fueled the fury of hurricanes Helene and Milton

Two new studies link abnormally hot water in the Gulf of Mexico to the storms’ intensity

Hurricane Milton, shown here bearing down on Florida on October 9, was supercharged by anomalously warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico. Earlier in its development, it had “explosively” strengthened from a Category 1 to a Category 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours, though it’s expected to weaken, but only slightly, before landfall.


By Carolyn Gramling

Extreme Climate Update logo

Meteorologists have watched in awe as Hurricane Milton, churning over the anomalously warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, swiftly transformed into one of the strongest Atlantic storms on record.

Over just 20 hours on October 7, Hurricane Milton explosively intensified from a Category 1 to a catastrophic Category 5 storm, with sustained winds of 290 kilometers per hour (180 miles per hour). The storm is expected to make landfall on the west coast of Florida either late on October 9 or early October 10 as a major Category 3 or 4 hurricane, bringing deadly storm surge and hurricane-force winds to coastal regions still reeling from Hurricane Helene just two weeks earlier (SN: 10/1/24).


The rapid intensifications of both storms were fueled by the Gulf’s extremely warm water. Developing tropical storms can suck up heat from warm seawater, dragging the humid air upward where it condenses, releasing that heat into the storm’s core. As the storm moves forward, it pumps more and more water and heat into the air, and the spiraling winds will move faster and faster. Milton’s particularly explosive rate of growth may also be linked to its relatively compact size, compared with Helene (SN: 9/27/24).

Two separate reports published this week find that those warm Gulf waters were made hundreds of times more likely by human-caused climate change.

An analysis by the international World Weather Attribution, or WWA, initiative, released October 9, analyzed the role of climate change in contributing to Hurricane Helene’s intensification and its torrential rainfall, including as it moved inland across the Southern Appalachian Mountains. 

Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures in the path of the storm were, on average, about 1.26 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than they would have been in a world without climate change, the WWA researchers found. Or, to put it another way, the anomalously high temperatures along Helene’s path from development to landfall were made 200 to 500 times more likely due to climate change.

Scientists can estimate how much more likely or severe some past natural disasters were due to human-caused climate change. Here’s how.

Helene dumped as much as 50 to 75 centimeters of rain in some parts of Appalachia (20 to 30 inches), which led to flooding and hundreds of deaths across the U.S. Southeast. That rainfall, the researchers determined, was about 10 percent heavier than it would have been without human-caused climate change.

Climate Central, based in Princeton, N.J., contributed to the WWA’s sea surface temperature analysis for Helene. And, in a separate alert released October 7, Climate Central reported that elevated sea surface temperatures in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico were also behind the “explosive” increase in intensity of Hurricane Milton. The analysis found that the sea surface temperatures in the Gulf were made 400 to 800 times more likely over the past two weeks due to human-caused climate change.

That may be an underestimate, the group notes. Normally, Climate Central uses daily sea surface temperatures collected by the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Information. However, Hurricane Helene’s impact has temporarily knocked out the NCEI data repository, based in Asheville, N.C.

So, to do the Milton analysis, Climate Central used sea surface temperature data obtained from the European Union’s Copernicus Marine Service. And those data tend to run slightly colder, on average, than the NCEI data, says Orlando, Fla.–based climate scientist Daniel Gilford, of Climate Central.

“One of the important messages [from both reports] is that climate change is here, happening, right now,” Gilford says. “It influenced both of these storms. We know it’s to blame for these events getting to the extent that they did. And that is something dramatic. We should sit up and take notice.”

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Warning as 'diablo wind' could trigger fires and power outages across California

MUTATION OF A SANTA ANNA

By Ellyn Lapointe For Dailymail.Com
16 October 2024 | 

A warning has been issued to 30,000 California residents as 'diablo wind' could spark fires and power outages this week.

The phenomena is the colloquial name for hot, dry winds that blow in from the northeast, sometimes hitting the San Francisco Bay Area and California's central coast.

The National Weather Service (NWS) has reported that the winds could reach up to 45 miles per hour, but may exceed 60 miles per hour in certain locations.

As a precaution, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) - a California utility company - notified customers across the state's north and central coastal area that it may shut down power lines to limit the danger of electrical sparks.


The NWS has issued a 'red flag' fire warning for parts of northern California as hot, dry 'Diablo' winds are forecasted to whip across the state

Nine Bay Area counties, including San Francisco, the Peninsula coast and the San Francisco bay shoreline, have been notified about the potential impacts.

Along with cities located in the zone of fire risk include Napa, Berkeley, San Jose and Big Sur, according to the NWS.

Officials are urging residents in the path of the winds to have an emergency plan in case a fire starts near them.

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These winds are most common during the spring and fall, and studies have shown that climate change is increasing the likelihood of wind-driven extreme fire conditions in autumn.

Diablo winds whip California with gusts that parch the land and make it much easier for wildfires to start and spread rapidly.

Officials said winds are expected to reach 25-35 mph, gusting to 45 mph, with peak winds occurring late Thursday into Friday.

At higher elevations - most notably in the interior mountains of the North Bay and the Diablo Range - gusts could exceed 65 mph.

'The winds are coming from the north, not the typical sea breeze from the water which would be cooler,' said Roger Gass, a meteorologist with the San Francisco Bay Area office of the NWS.

The warning is in effect from 11pm Thursday through 5pm Saturday, local time.

'This may be the highest fire risk period of the year so far,' Daniel Swain, a climate scientist a the University of California, Los Angeles, said on X.

That's partly because these winds come on the heels of an exceptionally hot and dry summer, with some areas seeing no rain since July, according to Golden Gate Weather Services.

The Kincade Fire that ravaged Sonoma County in 2019 began when a cable on a PG&E transmission tower broke, and was fueled by Diablo winds

Previous fires stoked by Diablo winds have been devastating.

The Kincade Fire that ravaged Sonoma County in 2019 began when a cable on a PG&E transmission tower broke, and was fueled by Diablo winds. It burned more than 77,000 acres and destroyed nearly 400 buildings.

In 2017, the Tubbs Fire in Napa County killed 22 people and burned roughly 36,000 acres. Sparked by an issue with a private electrical system, the blaze was fueled by Diablo winds.

And the Oakland Hills Firestorm of 1991 killed 25 people, injured 150 others and destroyed more than 3,000 homes. The Diablo winds helped spread this fire, tossing embers in all directions.

Until the winds dissipate, residents of affected areas are prohibited from using fire pits or barbecues, and from driving off-road, which could ignite a grass fire.

Officials have also warned residents to avoid using mowers or power tools outdoors, and asked that people double-check trailer chains to make sure they're not dragging on the road as the friction can create sparks.
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Scientists discover dogs are entering a new phase of evolution

By Ellyn Lapointe For Dailymail.Com


Dogs could be undergoing a third wave of domestication driven by humans' desire for pets that are friendly, calm and well-suited to a sedentary lifestyle.

Just decades ago, canines were seen as working animals, tasked with hunting pests, herding livestock and guarding their homes. 

But today, companionship is a much higher priority for pet owners. 

Scientists have found that this shift has increased levels of a hormone responsible for social bonding in dogs, and especially in service dogs. 


As our lives have become more sedentary, so have our pets' lives. Experts say that our comfortable modern lifestyles are driving a third wave of dog domestication

A study concluded that the hormone - oxytocin - is what drives dogs to seek contact with their owners. 

As humans domesticated wolves into the affectionate pets we know today, canines' sensitivity to oxytocin increased, according to the researchers.

The study, conducted by researchers at Sweden's Linköping University in 2017, investigated how dogs developed their unique ability to work together with humans, including their willingness to 'ask for help' when faced with a difficult problem.

The researchers suspected that the hormone oxytocin was involved, as it is known to play a role in social relationships between individuals. 

The effect of oxytocin depends on how well it binds to its receptor inside cells. 

Previous studies have shown that variations in genetic material located close to the gene that codes for oxytocin receptors influences dogs' ability to communicate. 

In other words, a dog's social skills are partially ingrained in their genetics - specifically to the genes that control their sensitivity to oxytocin. 

The researchers observed 60 golden retrievers as they attempted to lift a lid off a jar of treats, which was intentionally made impossible to open.

 They also collected DNA swabs from inside the dogs' noses to determine which variant of the oxytocin receptor each one had.


A 2017 study found that service dogs have a higher level of oxytocin - a hormone that facilitates social bonding - than pet dogs

The dogs performed this behavioral test twice, once after receiving a dose of oxytocin nasal spray, and once after receiving a dose of neutral saline nasal spray. 

The team timed the dogs to see how long they would attempt to open the jar themselves before turning to their owner to ask for help. 

The results showed that dogs with a particular genetic variant of the receptor had a stronger reaction to the oxytocin spray than other dogs, and that the oxytocin dose made them more likely to ask for help than the saline dose. 

These findings offer insight into how domestication has altered the genes that influence dogs' social skills. 

Now, canine experts Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods saiddogs' behavioral traits are undergoing a third wave of domestication. 

As the role that these animals play in our lives has shifted from worker to companion, so has their behavior, and perhaps their biology too.

Hare is an evolutionary-anthropology professor at Duke University and the director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center. Woods manages the center's Puppy Kindergarten program, which trains pups to become service dogs.

The Puppy Kindergarten also serves as a long-term research project to assess how different training strategies impact dogs' behavior and cognitive development.

Studying these puppies has convinced Woods and Hare that service dogs are 'uniquely well adapted to life in the 21st century,' they wrote in The Atlantic. 

These dogs are 'highly trained professionals' who can assist their owner with tasks, remain calm and quiet when not actively working, and have uniquely friendly dispositions. 

'Unlike most pet dogs, service dogs are attracted to strangers, even as puppies,' Woods and Hare wrote.

'And increasing friendliness seems to have changed these dogs’ biology, just as it did thousands of years ago,' the researchers added.

These highly trained dogs embody the traits of the ideal canine companion. They fit seamlessly into the lives of their owners and into the modern world. 

'Service dogs fit into the life of their person in a way that many able-bodied dog owners want their pets to fit into theirs,' Woods and Hare wrote.

Even just a few decades ago, dogs were viewed very differently than they are today. They were working animals tasked with jobs like hunting, herding and guarding their home and the people in it - conditioned to be active and on alert. 

Up until the 1990s, dogs spent most of their lives outside. Without the sprawling urbanization we know today, they had plenty of space to roam and explore. 

'If your dog slept on your bed, you would likely wake up covered in ticks or fleas,' the researchers wrote. 


Some behaviors that made dogs appealing to our ancestors to become maladaptive, like guarding against strange people and animals

But today, more dogs live in densely populated areas, and consequently spend a lot more time inside. They also interact with unfamiliar dogs and people more frequently.

This shift has caused some behaviors that made dogs appealing to our ancestors to become maladaptive, Woods and Hare wrote. For example, 'guarding against strange people and animals might make a dog more difficult to walk around the neighborhood.'

'Dogs that are more energetic, excitable, fearful, or anxious than average are more likely to be relinquished to shelters, where they may struggle to find a new home,' they added. 

Woods and Hare believe that these new societal pressures are driving a third wave of canine domestication, with service dogs representing the most highly evolved members of the pack.

'Service dogs may look like your average Labrador retriever, but compared with military working dogs or even the average family Lab, they are almost a different breed,' the researchers wrote. 

'The differences between Canine Companion dogs and pet dogs also demonstrate how different a population of dogs can become in less than 50 years,' they added.

Canine domestication dates back between 40,000 and 14,000 years. The first wave of domestication began when humans lived as foragers, and often left food waste on the outskirts of their settlements.

Wolves that took advantage of this predictable, energy-rich food source gained a survival edge, Woods and Hare say. 'As a result, over generations, the animals’ attraction to humans replaced fear and aggression.'

The second wave began after the Industrial Revolution. During this time, the rising middle class wanted dogs that represented the good taste and disposable income of their owners. 

This prompted Westerners to begin breeding dogs for specific physical traits, ultimately creating most of the 200 dog breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club today, the researchers wrote. 

As we enter a third wave of domestication - one that is more focused on tailoring dogs' personalities to our modern world - Woods and Hare believe that humans should take an active role in facilitating this process. 

'For the happiness of dogs and their owners, humans need to breed and train more dogs like service animals, embarking on a new wave of dog domestication to help them fit into the new world we have created,' they wrote. 

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At-home experiments shed light on cats’ liquid behavior


Cats are tough to test in a lab, so researchers brought the lab to the cats


Cats' ability to pour themselves into containers and flow through tight spaces is well-documented. A new study is trying to understand how and why this quirk exists.
Petra Richli/Getty Images

By Andrea Tamayo

Cats may seem solid, but they’re actually somewhat liquid — at least according to one 2017 theoretical physics paper inspired by videos of cats squeezing under doors, into tight vases and down narrow crevices. Now, one researcher has taken this idea a step further, physically testing dozens of cats to see when they act more like liquids or solids.

Cats fluidly move through tall and narrow nooks but hesitate when they approach uncomfortably short holes, biologist Péter Pongrácz reports September 17 in iScience. The finding suggests that cats are aware of their own body sizes and may form mental images of themselves.

Pongrácz, of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, tested dogs in a lab and showed that dogs are capable of self-representation. In that study, published in 2019 in Animal Cognition, dogs slowed down and hesitated before walking through uncomfortably small openings, revealing that they rely on awareness of their body size to make decisions. Once the experiment was done, Pongrácz thought, “What about cats?” he says.

But cats are more difficult to test in the lab than dogs. Felines tend to be reclusive and would be stressed out in that environment, Pongrácz says. So, he brought the lab to the cats.

With help from colleagues, Pongrácz built a portable lab that they set up in the homes of 29 cat owners throughout Budapest. In each home, the team attached two large, cardboard panels to a doorframe: one with five holes of the same height but decreasing width and another with five holes of the same width but decreasing height. An owner stood on one side of the panel while the cat and the experimenter stood on the other. For each trial, the cat had to squeeze from the experimenter’s side to the owner’s side through the holes while being filmed.

A model of the two panels the researchers used to test the cats. The one on the left has holes of the same height but decreasing width. The one on the right has holes of the same width but decreasing height.
In an experiment, cats were tasked with traversing holes in two panels — one with five holes of the same height that decreased in width (illustrated left) and another with five holes of the same width that decreased in height (right). Whether a cat fluidly moved through a hole depended more on the hole’s height than its width.P. Pongrácz/iScience 2024

Getting cats to follow directions is a tough task. Unlike dogs, cats are hard to call back to a spot. Once a cat oozed through the hole, the owner had to catch their pet and hand them over the panel to a researcher to start a new trial. But some cats hated being handled and evaded their owners’ hands at all costs, Pongrácz says.

Thirty out of 38 cats finished the experiment. When faced with holes of varying height, 22 cats hesitated to crawl through the shortest, an analysis of the recordings revealed. When the holes varied in width, only eight cats paused before approaching the narrowest cranny. Most cats squeezed through slim openings without hesitating. The team calls this strategy trial-and-error: Regardless of whether the cats fit or not, they tried to flow through.

In nature, this hesitation to hunch down and crawl through short holes may be a self-preservation strategy, Pongrácz says. If a cat squeezes through a hole without being able to see what’s on the other side, they may be making themselves vulnerable to potential threats. The fact that they still pause in the safety of their homes suggests that the cats also rely on their body size representation, or how they imagine their body sizes, to plan their approach.

Pongrácz’s experiment is simple and elegant, says Sridhar Ravi, an aerospace engineer at the University of New South Wales in Australia. Ravi performed a similar experiment with bumblebees and in 2020 published the first study to show that a flying insect was aware of its body size and form. But he suspects that cats may act differently depending on why a feline desires squeezing through a hole. For example, a cat might hesitate to trek through a hole while chasing a mouse to avoid injury during quick movements. “That is something the study could have commented on or even experimented,” Ravi says.

Despite the challenges of testing cats, Pongrácz still had a lot of fun. He met many amusing cats, but says that “the funniest things are how the people behave.” Some owners thought their cats were geniuses, only for those felines to struggle with the experiment. Other owners were convinced their cats lacked intelligence. Minutes later, the cats would easily complete the task, shocking their owners.

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