Southern Ocean warming will mean a wetter West Coast

Cornell University

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ITHACA, N.Y. – As global temperatures warm, the Southern Ocean – between Antarctica and other continents – will eventually release heat absorbed from the atmosphere, leading to projected long-term increases in precipitation over East Asia and the Western U.S., regardless of climate mitigation efforts.

These teleconnections between the tropical Pacific and far-flung areas are reported in a Cornell University-led computer-model study published in Nature Geoscience.

While other computer models have projected similar precipitation increases generated by a warming Southern Ocean, major uncertainties and a wide range of predictions exist between models.

The new study serves to reduce those uncertainties, which could improve predictions of global mean temperatures and regional precipitation.

“We needed to find the cause of those uncertainties,” said Hanjun Kim, the study’s co-corresponding author and a postdoctoral associate working with co-authors Flavio Lehner and Angeline Pendergrass, both assistant professors of atmospheric sciences at Cornell. Sarah Kang, professor in the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, is the paper’s other corresponding author.

“I found that low-altitude cloud feedbacks over the Southern Hemisphere can be one cause of those uncertainties in remote Northern Hemisphere regional precipitation,” Kim said. “If we try to reduce the uncertainty of Southern Hemisphere cloud feedbacks, then we can also improve the prediction of global mean temperatures.”

The Southern Ocean has a higher capacity for absorbing heat than other bodies of water due to a strong upwelling of deep cold water, but eventually the water will warm and gradually release heat. When this happens, that heat is distributed, creating teleconnections, which are predicted to increase precipitation in East Asia during summers and in the Western U.S. during winters. Such teleconnections are very similar to how El Niño affects weather patterns.

The model predicted that due to the ocean’s slow release of heat, the new precipitation patterns could persist for up to 150 years, regardless of efforts to reduce greenhouse gases.

“We can occasionally see these processes today, which allows us to study them,” Lehner said, “but we expect in the future for these processes to switch from being an occasional occurrence to being a more permanent state of the system.”

Kim found that low-lying clouds over the Southern Ocean act as a key regulator affecting sea-surface temperatures. Accounting for these cloud feedbacks in climate models help explain the uncertainties and variations from one model to another, according to the study.

There are few observational facilities in Antarctica to provide data on cloud feedbacks in the Southern Ocean, so increasing those would in turn improve predictions, Kim said.

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

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Journal

Nature Geoscience

DOI

10.1038/s41561-025-01669-5 

Article Title

Higher precipitation in East Asia and western United States expected with future Southern Ocean warming

Article Publication Date

2-Apr-2025

 

New research shows that propaganda is on the rise in China

Researchers used an innovative method to examine the extent of propaganda campaigns in China

University of Oregon

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If someone picks up a newspaper in China, there’s a good chance it contains some government propaganda masquerading as news, according to a new study co-led by a University of Oregon expert.

Hannah Waight, an assistant professor of sociology at the UO, and her collaborators found that the use of state-planted propaganda is on the rise in China. And it’s not just a tool for spreading ideological content. It’s also used to control and constrain other kinds of information beyond political ideals, including natural disaster and public health reporting in China, according to the researchers’ findings.

“On particularly sensitive days, up to 30 percent of major newspapers’ content in China is planted by the state,” Waight said. “The use of propaganda crowds out independent reporting and delays information during crisis events like earthquakes and the early days of the COVID-19 epidemic.”

The study reports that state-scripted propaganda on newsstands is a near-daily phenomenon in China, with some form of scripted propaganda in the news around 90 percent of days. And, on average, at least one front-page article in party newspapers is planted by the state, which has grown fourfold over the course of a decade.

The research was published in March in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Waight co-led the paper with Yin Yuan, recent doctoral graduate from the University of California, San Diego and co-authors Margaret Roberts, a political science professor also at the UC San Diego and Brandon Stewart, a sociology professor at Princeton University.

Autocratic governments have long used propaganda campaigns to influence the media, Waight said, but they are difficult to identify. So the researchers used an innovative new method of measurement that can more effectively capture propaganda in China.

The researchers developed an approach that could identify instances where newspapers followed propaganda “scripts” from the government or were coerced into covering something in a specific way. The research team applied this formula to millions of newspaper articles over the course of the decade from 2012-22, which is aligned with President Xi Jinping’s authoritarian consolidation of power.

They validated their method by comparing their findings to leaked documents, which they obtained from China Digital Times, a U.S.-based nonprofit media organization. The leaked documents contained directives from the government about what newspapers should print. Their side-by-side analysis confirmed that their approach was accurately identifying propaganda.

While propaganda is a well-studied phenomenon, Waight said their research adopted a more expansive definition of what propaganda entails, to include more than ideological content.

By examining the processes the Chinese state uses to intervene in the media environment, Waight and colleagues discovered that state scripting covers a much broader range of topics than might be expected. They supported that evidence by turning to two case studies to showcase how propaganda goes beyond the ideological. One looked at earthquakes and the other looked at COVID-19 coverage.

They decided to look at earthquakes because they’ve become a sensitive issue for the Chinese government in the wake the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, which resulted in nearly 90,000 casualties and the loss of millions of homes. The government faced intense scrutiny and allegations that failing public infrastructure and construction contributed to the massive devastation.

Because entities like the United States Geological Survey collect geological data that tracks the instances and severity of earthquakes, the researchers were able to compare a reliable dataset against how the media has covered more serious earthquakes since 2012.

They found that earthquake coverage has declined, and when news outlets do report on earthquakes they have increasingly used government scripts in their stories.

A similar pattern transpired after COVID-19 triggered the lockdown in Wuhan in January 2020. Very little coverage could be found in major news outlets, despite the fact that search engine data showed people were looking for more information about the emerging health crisis.

“Our case studies showed us that the use of propaganda scripts is not just about getting a certain ideological message out there,” Waight said. “It's also about constraining the way that newspapers report on particularly sensitive events like earthquakes and COVID-19.”

She hopes other researchers use their findings and draw from their approach to conduct similar projects in other regions. While she stresses that their study is specific to China, she believes their strategy could help guide an examination of other propaganda campaigns that use scripting.

She also hopes their work creates a foundation for new research questions, like whether the public can differentiate between independent reporting and propaganda.

“There are many open questions about how autocratic governments around the world are using covert propaganda campaigns to influence the media ecosystem,” she said. “We also need a better understanding of how government propaganda and censorship affects the opinions and beliefs of media consumers.”

— By Emily Halnon

About the University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences
The University of Oregon College of Arts and Sciences supports the UO’s mission and shapes its identity as a comprehensive research university. With disciplines in humanities and social and natural sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences serves approximately two-thirds of all UO students. The College of Arts and Sciences faculty includes some of the world’s most accomplished researchers, and the more than $75 million in sponsored research activity of the faculty underpins the UO’s status as a Carnegie Research I institution and its membership in the Association of American Universities.

Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2408260122 

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The decade-long growth of government-authored news media in China under Xi Jinping

Article Publication Date

 

Even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts, study finds

A study by researchers at the Brown University School of Public Health found that Americans have poorer survival rates than Europeans across all wealth levels and detailed factors driving the disparity

Brown University

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PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Comparing wealth and survival rates in the U.S. with those in Europe, researchers found that over a 10-year period, Americans across all wealth levels were more likely to die than their European counterparts.

The findings were detailed in a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine by a team led by researchers at the Brown University School of Public Health.

The analysis compared data from more than 73,000 adults in the U.S. and different regions of Europe who were age 50 to 85 in 2010 to determine how wealth affects a person’s chances of dying. The results revealed that people with more wealth tend to live longer than those with less wealth, especially in the U.S., where the gap between the rich and poor is much larger than in Europe.

Comparison data also showed that at every wealth level in the U.S., mortality rates were higher than those in the parts of Europe the researchers studied. The nation’s wealthiest Americans have shorter lifespans on average than the wealthiest Europeans; in some cases, the wealthiest Americans have survival rates on par with the poorest Europeans in western parts of Europe such as Germany, France and the Netherlands.

U.S. life expectancy has been declining in recent years, said study author Irene Papanicolas, a professor of health services, policy and practice at Brown. The study provides a more detailed picture of life expectancy across demographics in the U.S. compared to different parts of Europe, she said.

"The findings are a stark reminder that even the wealthiest Americans are not shielded from the systemic issues in the U.S. contributing to lower life expectancy, such as economic inequality or risk factors like stress, diet or environmental hazards,” said Papanicolas, who directs the School of Public Health’s Center for Health System Sustainability. “If we want to improve health in the U.S., we need to better understand the underlying factors that contribute to these differences — particularly amongst similar socioeconomic groups — and why they translate to different health outcomes across nations.”

According to the study, individuals in the wealthiest quartile had a death rate that is 40% lower than for individuals in the poorest quartile. Individuals in Continental Europe died at rates approximately 40% lower than participants in the U.S. throughout the study period. Participants from Southern Europe had estimated death rates around 30% lower than U.S. participants over the study period, while participants from Eastern Europe have estimated death rates 13% to 20% lower.

“We found that where you stand in your country’s wealth distribution matters for your longevity, and where you stand in your country compared to where others stand in theirs matters, too” said study author Sara Machado, a research scientist at Brown’s Center for Health System Sustainability. “Fixing health outcomes is not just a challenge for the most vulnerable — even those in the top quartile of wealth are affected.”

The study, which analyzed data from the U.S. Health and Retirement Study and Europe’s Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement, underscores how weaker social safety nets and structural disparities in the U.S. may contribute to poorer survival rates across all wealth groups. These shortcomings disproportionately affect the poorest residents but ultimately leave even the wealthiest Americans more vulnerable than their European counterparts, the researchers argued.

The study noted how systemic cultural and behavioral factors, such as diet, smoking and social mobility, may also play a role. For example, smoking rates and living in rural areas — both linked to poorer health — were more common in the U.S.

The researchers also highlighted a “survivor effect” in the U.S., where poorer individuals with worse health outcomes were more likely to die earlier, leaving behind a population that is healthier and wealthier as age groups progress. This creates the illusion that wealth inequality decreases over time, when in reality it’s partly due to the early deaths of the poorest Americans.

“Our previous work has shown that while wealth inequality narrows after 65 across the U.S. and Europe, in the U.S. it narrows because the poorest Americans die sooner and in greater proportion,” Papanicolas said.

The researchers said the findings provide a sobering view of U.S. health outcomes and a call to action for policymakers to address a growing wealth-mortality gap with policies that have a broader focus than the health system’s shortcomings.

“If you look at other countries, there are better outcomes, and that means we can learn from them and improve," Machado said. “It’s not necessarily about spending more — it’s about addressing the factors we’re overlooking, which could deliver far greater benefits than we realize.”

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Journal

New England Journal of Medicine

DOI

10.1056/NEJMsa2408259 

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Association between Wealth and Mortality in the United States and Europe

Article Publication Date

2-Apr-2025

 

Monkeys are world’s best yodellers - new research

Researchers discover how ‘voice breaks’ are produced, similar to Alpine yodelling

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Anglia Ruskin University

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audio: 

A tufted capuchin call in real time and slowed down, with Dr Christian Herbst of the University of Vienna explaining the frequency jumps made during the call

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Credit: Dr Christian Herbst, University of Vienna

A new study has found that the world’s finest yodellers aren’t from Austria or Switzerland, but the rainforests of Latin America.

Published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B and led by experts from Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) and the University of Vienna, the research provides significant new insights into the diverse vocal sounds of non-human primates, and reveals for the first time how certain calls are produced.

Apes and monkeys possess special anatomical structures in their throats called vocal membranes, which disappeared from humans through evolution to allow for more stable speech. However, the exact benefit these provide to non-human primates had previously been unclear.

The new research has discovered that these vocal membranes, which are extremely thin and sit above the vocal folds in the larynx, allow monkeys to introduce “voice breaks” to their calls.

These voice breaks occur when the monkeys switch sound production from the vocal folds to the vocal membranes. The calls produced possess the same rapid transitions in frequency heard in Alpine yodelling, or in Tarzan’s famous yell, but cover a much wider frequency range.

The study involved analysis of CT scans, computer simulations and fieldwork at La Senda Verde Wildlife Sanctuary in Bolivia. There, researchers recorded and studied the calls of various primate species, including the black and gold howler monkey (Alouatta caraya), tufted capuchin (Sapajus apella), black-capped squirrel monkey (Saimiri boliviensis), and Peruvian spider monkey (Ateles chamek).

New World monkeys, whose range stretches from Mexico to Argentina, were found to have evolved the largest vocal membranes of all the primates, suggesting these thin ribbons of tissue play a particularly important role in their vocal production and repertoire of calls.

The study also revealed that the "ultra-yodels" produced by these monkeys can involve frequency leaps up to five times larger than the frequency changes that are possible with the human voice, and while human yodels typically span one octave or less, New World monkeys are capable of exceeding three musical octaves.

Senior author Dr Jacob Dunn, Associate Professor in Evolutionary Biology at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in Cambridge, England, said: “These results show how monkeys take advantage of an evolved feature in their larynx – the vocal membrane – which allows for a wider range of calls to be produced, including these ultra-yodels.

“This might be particularly important in primates, which have complex social lives and need to communicate in a variety of different ways.

“It’s highly likely this has evolved to enrich the animals’ call repertoire, and is potentially used for attention-grabbing changes, call diversification, or identifying themselves.”

Lead author Dr Christian T Herbst, of the Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna, said: “This is a fascinating example of how nature provides the means of enriching animal vocalisation, despite their lack of language.

“The production of these intricate vocal patterns is mostly enabled by the way the animals’ larynx is anatomically shaped, and does not require complex neural control generated by the brain.”

Professor Tecumseh Fitch, an expert in human vocal evolution from the University of Vienna and a co-author of the study, said: "Our study shows that vocal membranes extend the monkey's pitch range, but also destabilise its voice. They may have been lost during human evolution to promote pitch stability in singing and speech.”

In addition to Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Vienna, experts from Osaka University and Ritsumeikan University in Japan, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden, and La Senda Verde Wildlife Sanctuary in Bolivia also contributed to the research.

The full paper will be published online on 3 April in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, and will be available here https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0005

Black and gold howler monkeys (Alouatta caraya) - photo by Dr Jacob Dunn, Anglia Ruskin University

Tufted capuchins (Sapajus apella) - photo by Dr Jacob Dunn, Anglia Ruskin University

Peruvian spider monkey (Ateles chamek) - photo by Dr Jacob Dunn, Anglia Ruskin University

Black-capped squirrel monkey (Saimiri boliviensis) - photo by Dr Jacob Dunn, Anglia Ruskin University

Journal

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences

DOI

10.1098/rstb.2024.0005 

Article Title

‘Monkey yodels’ – frequency jumps in New World monkey vocalizations greatly surpass human vocal register transitions

 

Are lifetimes of big appliances really shrinking?

There's a popular perception that the useful lifetime of large appliances, such as washing machines and ovens, has decreased over the years. But consumer preferences may play a bigger role than people realize.

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

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Big appliances, like washing machines, ovens and refrigerators, are a major investment for many households. Consumers hope that these appliances will last for decades. More and more, however, people have the perception that these big-ticket items might not be lasting as long as they once did.

But when Kamila Krych looked at actual trends in product lifetimes as a part of her PhD research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) Industrial Ecology Programme, she found that wasn’t quite true.

“Despite what people think, there is no evidence that product lifetimes are decreasing,” she said. “Many people think that products have been becoming less durable. But this work suggests that no, that’s not entirely true.”

Well, aside from two big-ticket items: washing machines and ovens.

The big exceptions

Krych looked at a range of data on large appliances in Norwegian households, starting from the time they were first adopted in the country. For refrigerators, washing machines and ovens, this was starting in 1950.

Other appliances didn’t find their way into Norwegian households until several decades later. That was true for dishwashers, freezers and tumble dryers.

For almost all of these appliances, their lifetimes stayed roughly the same across the decades. That was not the case for washing machine or ovens, however.

Washing machine lifetimes decreased by 45 per cent, meaning that their lifetime decreased from 19.2 to 10. 6 years, while ovens decreased from 23.6 years to 14.3 years (39 per cent).

"If planned obsolescence or another single factor was to blame, we would expect the same decreasing trend across all appliances. Instead, we only found it for washing machines and ovens," she said.

Why was this true just for these two appliances?

Cleaner lifestyles?

To find the answer, Krych dug deeper into published information on consumer preferences and details about the appliances themselves.

With washing machines, “it’s pretty simple,” she said. The lifetime of an appliance isn’t necessarily how many years the product lasts, but may be more closely related to how many cycles it runs.

“For washing machines, what matters is how often you run it. And there has been a documented large change in laundry habits,” she said. “People do the laundry much more often now than in the past.”

Krych found a 2003 study that showed that in 1960, an average Norwegian family of four did a laundry twice a week. By 2000, this number had quadrupled to 8 washing cycles a week for that family of four.“This obviously can have an influence on lifetimes of washing machines,”  she said.

For ovens, however, the story is a little more complicated.

Changes in electronics and kitchen trends

Krych’s research didn’t directly address how people used their kitchens, but she was able to look at published research on societal trends in Norway over the decades.

“Ovens used to be very durable, and historically lifetimes were high, because oven design is very simple,” she said.

But Krych found other research that showed roughly 40 per cent of all ovens in Norway are discarded when they are still functioning. That’s a rate that is higher than other household appliances.

Another trend she saw in her own research was that the lifetimes of other appliances in Norwegian kitchens, such as refrigerators and dishwashers, was also converging – meaning that all of these appliances had about the same lifetimes.

“This is circumstantial evidence, but this points to the importance of kitchen renovation,” she said.  “And right now, we often have all of these appliances integrated in kitchen cupboards. And because of how expensive things are in Norway, it's often much easier to discard everything at once when you renovate your kitchen than to keep your oven for longer, even though it still works.”

Another change that social scientists have identified, Krych said, is the change in the way the kitchen is used in Norwegian households.

“There is lots of social science research that says we use kitchens differently now than we used to in the past,” she said. “People often have kitchens integrated with their living rooms. And this means that the look of the kitchen matters much more.”

Changing consumer behaviour

Current policies in the EU designed to help cut the overall environmental impact of consumer consumption have focused on product durability and incentives for repairing products.

Krych says that’s a good goal but thinks that policymakers could benefit from including social factors, such as changes in lifestyles, into their planning.“Product lifetimes are not only about how long the product can last, but also what people do with them,” she said.

Reference: Krych, K. & Pettersen, J. B. (2025). Long-term lifetime trends of large appliances since the introduction in Norwegian households. Journal of Industrial Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13608

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Journal

Journal of Industrial Ecology

DOI

10.1111/jiec.13608 

Method of Research

Literature review

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Long-term lifetime trends of large appliances since the introduction in Norwegian households

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