How climate change is affecting extreme weather events around the world

Date: June 28, 2022

Source: IOP Publishing

Summary:  

For a long time, climate scientists have struggled to link extreme weather events to climate change. This has changed. The science of weather event attribution is now beginning to show the true costs and impacts that human-caused climate change is having today. This fast-growing body of research aims to disentangle the various drivers of extreme weather events from human-induced climate change and the best assessments can provide valuable information in insuring against loss and damage, funding adaptation measures, and litigating against polluters.

Attribution science has led to major advances in linking the impacts of extreme weather and human-induced climate change, but large gaps in the published research still conceal the full extent of climate change damage, warns a new study released today in the first issue of Environmental Research: Climate, a new academic journal published by IOP Publishing.

Researchers from the University of Oxford, Imperial College London and the Victoria University of Wellington reviewed the impacts of five different types of extreme weather events and to what degree these damaging events could be attributed to human induced climate change.

To do this, they combined information from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and results from a fast increasing body of attribution studies -- where weather observations and climate models are used to determine the role that climate change played in specific weather events.

They found that for some extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, the link with climate change is clear and unequivocal across the world, and that the extent of the impacts are likely being underestimated by insurers, economists and governments. For others, such as tropical cyclones, the paper shows that important differences exist between regions and the role that climate change plays in each event is more variable than for heatwaves.

"The rise of more extreme and intense weather events such as heatwaves, droughts and heavy rainfall have dramatically increased in recent years, affecting people all over the globe. Understanding the role that climate change plays in these events can help us better prepare for them. It also allows us to determine the real cost that carbon emissions have in our lives," says Ben Clarke from the University of Oxford, lead author of the study.

The authors note that there is an urgent need for more data from lower- and middle-income countries, where the impacts of climate change are more strongly felt. Research on these impacts is hampered when national weather data is not publicly available -- examples include South Africa, where corruption denies funds to weather reporting facilities leading to huge data gaps in an otherwise good network; drought-prone Somalia, where disorderly regime changes have disrupted measurements; and many countries, such as Poland, where weather data is only available for a high fee, and thus generally not for publicly funded research.

"We really don't have a comprehensive overview or detailed inventory of what impacts climate change is having today, yet," says Dr Friederike Otto from the Grantham Institute -- Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London, co-author of the study.

"But we do now have the tools and advanced understanding to create such an inventory, but these need to be applied more evenly across the world to improve our understanding in areas where evidence is lacking. Otherwise we are denying countries the knowledge to make the best use of sparse funds and improve chances for people to live safely and adapt to the changing climate," she concludes.

Journal Reference:Ben Clarke, Friederike Otto, Rupert Stuart-Smith, Luke Harrington. Extreme weather impacts of climate change: an attribution perspective. Environmental Research: Climate, 2022; 1 (1): 012001 DOI: 10.1088/2752-5295/ac6e7d

Is AI good or bad for the climate? It's complicated

A new framework for understanding and shaping the impacts of Artificial Intelligence on greenhouse gas emissions

Date:June 28, 2022

Source: McGill University

Summary:

Experts in AI, climate change, and public policy present a framework for understanding the complex and multifaceted relationship of AI with greenhouse gas emissions, and suggest ways to better align AI with climate change goals.

As the world fights climate change, will the increasingly widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) be a help or a hindrance? In a paper published this week in Nature Climate Change, a team of experts in AI, climate change, and public policy present a framework for understanding the complex and multifaceted relationship of AI with greenhouse gas emissions, and suggest ways to better align AI with climate change goals.

"AI affects the climate in many ways, both positive and negative, and most of these effects are poorly quantified," said David Rolnick, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at McGill University and a Core Academic Member of Mila -- Quebec AI Institute, who co-authored the paper. "For example, AI is being used to track and reduce deforestation, but AI-based advertising systems are likely making climate change worse by increasing the amount that people buy."

The paper divides the impacts of AI on greenhouse gas emissions into three categories: 1) Impacts from the computational energy and hardware used to develop, train, and run AI algorithms, 2) immediate impacts caused by the applications of AI -- such as optimizing energy use in buildings (which decreases emissions) or accelerating fossil fuel exploration (which increases emissions), and 3) system-level impacts caused by the ways in which AI applications affect behaviour patterns and society more broadly, such as via advertising systems and self-driving cars.

"Climate change should be a key consideration when developing and assessing AI technologies," said Lynn Kaack, Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy at the Hertie School, and lead author on the report. "We find that those impacts that are easiest to measure are not necessarily those with the largest impacts. So, evaluating the effect of AI on the climate holistically is important."

AI's impacts on greenhouse gas emissions -- a matter of choice

The authors emphasize the ability of researchers, engineers, and policymakers to shape the impacts of AI, writing that its "… ultimate effect on the climate is far from predestined, and societal decisions will play a large role in shaping its overall impacts." For example, the paper notes that AI-enabled autonomous vehicle technologies can help lower emissions if they are designed to facilitate public transportation, but they can increase emissions if they are used in personal cars and result in people driving more.

The researchers also note that machine learning expertise is often concentrated among a limited set of actors. This raises potential challenges with respect to the governance and implementation of machine learning in the context of climate change, since it may create or widen the digital divide, or shift power from public to large private entities by virtue of who controls relevant data or intellectual capital.

"The choices that we make implicitly as technologists can matter a lot," said Prof. Rolnick. "Ultimately, AI for Good shouldn't just be about adding beneficial applications on top of business as usual, it should be about shaping all the applications of AI to achieve the impact we want to see."

Journal Reference:Lynn H. Kaack, Priya L. Donti, Emma Strubell, George Kamiya, Felix Creutzig, David Rolnick. Aligning artificial intelligence with climate change mitigation. Nature Climate Change, 2022; 12 (6): 518 DOI: 10.1038/s41558-022-01377-7

The US Supreme Court is about to decide a major climate court case

The ruling could have ripple effects that extend beyond climate action

By Justine Calma@justcalma  Jun 28, 2022

Activists including Climate Action Campaign (CAC) gather outside of the Supreme Court to show support for

 protecting the Clean Air Act.

 Photo by Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for NRDC

This week, the Supreme Court is expected to decide a major climate case that could determine what tools the federal government can use to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, started out years ago as a battle over how much authority the EPA has to force power plants to cut down their pollution — but it’s turned into a bigger fight over how much power federal agencies have to enforce all kinds of regulations.

A BIGGER FIGHT OVER HOW MUCH POWER FEDERAL AGENCIES HAVE

With the Biden administration’s climate plans relying on drastically slashing CO2 emissions from power plants, the case is being closely watched by environmentalists. The Supreme Court’s decision could come down as soon as Wednesday, so here’s a quick primer on why this case is such a nail-biter.

WHAT IS WEST VIRGINIA V. EPA ABOUT?

The core of the lawsuit is a disagreement about the Clean Air Act, a bedrock environmental law in the US that lays out the EPA’s responsibility to protect the nation’s air quality by regulating pollution. Since 1970, EPA action under the Clean Air Act has led to a significant drop in major pollutants like particulate matter and nitrogen oxides.

In 2015, former President Barack Obama went further, using the Clean Air Act to mandate a new set of regulations for US power plants called the Clean Power Plan. In particular, the new plan set guidelines for carbon dioxide emissions, a greenhouse gas that is the primary driver of climate change. By regulating those emissions, the plan pushed states to transition to more clean energy from sources like solar and wind.

But the proposal didn’t last long. Two dozen states, including West Virginia, sued the EPA in response, and in 2016, the Supreme Court decided to put the Clean Power Plan on hold as the case made its way through court.

By 2019, the Trump administration had replaced the Clean Power Plan with its own weaker greenhouse gas regulations called the Affordable Clean Energy rule. Former President Donald Trump’s EPA also decided that the Obama administration had gone too far in using the Clean Air Act to push for greenhouse gas pollution cuts across the entire power sector — determining instead that its authority to regulate pollution was limited to what a power plant can do within its “fenceline.” Under the Trump administration’s interpretation of the Clean Air Act, the EPA might be able to push a power plant to install equipment that captures CO2 on-site so that it doesn’t escape into the atmosphere — but it can’t push a state to phase out fossil fuel power plants in favor of solar or wind farms.

In the meantime, a different group of states successfully sued to block the Trump plan, leaving it up to President Joe Biden’s EPA to craft an entirely new rule. West Virginia appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, and here we are. It’s now up to the Supreme Court to decide which interpretation holds sway, even though neither Obama nor Trump’s greenhouse gas rules ever went into effect.

WHY IS THIS CASE IMPORTANT?

A clean power grid is absolutely crucial to cleaning up the US’s frightfully dirty climate record.

The Biden administration, as part of rejoining the Paris climate agreement after Trump tried to renege, committed the US to reducing its planet-heating pollution by at least 50 percent this decade compared to peak pollution levels in 2005. By 2035, the Biden administration plans for the US power sector to be completely free of carbon pollution. This is all to meet a critical deadline that the whole planet faces. Global greenhouse gas emissions need to reach net zero by around 2050 to keep climate change from surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Beyond that threshold, millions more people are projected to be exposed to climate-driven disasters, including severe droughts, dangerous heat waves, and coastal flooding.

A CLEAN POWER GRID IS ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL TO CLEANING UP THE US’S FRIGHTFULLY DIRTY CLIMATE RECORD

Unfortunately, the current electrical grid is built primarily on fossil fuel power plants. The power sector alone is responsible for about a quarter of US greenhouse gas emissions. The only source of pollution bigger than the power sector in the US is transportation — and transitioning from gas-guzzlers to electric vehicles only becomes a cleaner choice if the grid runs on carbon-free energy.

Democrats have been trying to pass legislation that would push utilities to use more clean energy, but it’s been tied up in a congressional stalemate for months. That makes executive powers all the more important for the administration’s climate change efforts. Currently, Biden can try to use federal agencies like the EPA to crack down on polluters without relying on Congress. But with a conservative majority in the Supreme Court, including three Trump appointees, a decision could come down that restricts the EPA’s power to do that.

This fight is actually even bigger than the Clean Air Act or the EPA. In West Virginia v. EPA, “The plaintiffs want to hem in what they call the administrative state, the E.P.A. and other federal agencies that set rules and regulations that affect the American economy,” Coral Davenport writes for The New York Times. The case is the result of years of a coordinated strategy to hamstring the executive branch’s ability to regulate industry.

HOW MIGHT THE SUPREME COURT RULE?

We don’t know yet — but given the makeup of the court, environmental activists are unlikely to come away happy.

In one scenario, the court might decide to look narrowly at the Clean Air Act and what its language says about the EPA’s authority over power plants. In that case, the Clean Air Act might no longer be an appropriate vehicle for the EPA to rein in greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. That limited interpretation might leave it open for the EPA to find other ways to regulate greenhouse gas pollution — just not through the Clean Air Act.

THIS IS WHERE IT COULD START TO GET DICEY FOR THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION’S ABILITY TO RELY ON THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH TO GET ANYTHING DONE

On the other hand, the Supreme Court might decide to zoom out — looking beyond the language in the Clean Air Act. This is where it could start to get dicey for the Biden administration’s ability to rely on the executive branch to get anything done on climate change — or even other agendas that would require federal agencies to write and enforce rules on industry. The court could limit a federal agency’s ability to expand its powers beyond anything explicitly written out in law by Congress. Thanks to a 1984 doctrine called the “Chevron deference,” courts generally defer to a federal agency’s expertise in interpreting more ambiguous statutes. So, even if CO2 isn’t explicitly written about in the 1970 Clean Air Act, under this doctrine, the EPA might decide that it makes sense to tackle greenhouse gas pollution given today’s climate crisis.

The Supreme Court might instead seek to strengthen the “major questions doctrine,” which says that the court doesn’t need to give deference to federal agencies in matters of major national significance that Congress has yet to explicitly write into legislation.

Whatever it is, we’re likely to find out soon. The Supreme Court is scheduled to issue opinions tomorrow on four cases that are remaining this term, which might include West Virginia v. EPA. Until then, there are a whole lot of environmental advocates and legal experts on edge.

Mongabay Series: 

Indigenous Peoples and Conservation

Podcast: How marine conservation benefits from combining Indigenous knowledge and Western science

by Mike Gaworecki on 28 June 2022

On today’s episode of the Mongabay Newscast, we take a look at two stories that show the effectiveness of combining traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge and Western science for conservation and restoration initiatives.

Our first guest today is Dr. Gary Paul Nabhan, an ethnobotanist at the University of Arizona. He tells us about eelgrass, an ancestral food of the Comcaac people in the state of Sonora in Mexico. Nabhan tells us why eelgrass is making a big comeback as a sustainable source of food for the Comcaac community and gaining international attention in the process.

We also speak with Sara Iverson, a professor of biology at Canada’s Dalhousie University, about a research project called Apoqnmatulti’k that aims to better understand the movements of lobster, eel, and tomcod in two important ecosystems on Canada’s Atlantic coast. Iverson tells us why those study species were chosen by the Mi’kmaq people and why it’s so important that the project combines different ways of knowing, including Western science and traditional Indigenous knowledge.

Today we’re taking a look at two stories that show the effectiveness of combining traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge and Western science for conservation and restoration initiatives.

Listen here:

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/forcedn/mongabay/Mongabay_Newscast_ep147_v2.mp3

Earlier this month, we featured indigenous aquaculture projects on this podcast, looking at mussel farms in New Zealand and clam gardens in British Columbia, Canada. Today we’re sticking with aquatic environments and taking a look at two more projects, one focused on seagrasses in Mexico and the other on fish along the Atlantic coast of Canada.

Our first guest is Dr. Gary Paul Nabhan, an ethnobotanist at the University of Arizona. He tells us about eelgrass, an ancestral food of the Comcaac people in the state of Sonora in Mexico. Nabhan tells us why eelgrass is making a big comeback as a sustainable source of food for the Comcaac community and gaining international attention in the process.

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/forcedn/mongabay/Mongabay_Newscast_ep145.mp3

We also speak today with Sara Iverson, a professor of biology at Canada’s Dalhousie University, about a research project called Apoqnmatulti’k that aims to better understand the movements of lobster, eel, and tomcod in two important ecosystems on Canada’s Atlantic coast. Iverson tells us why those study species were chosen by the Mi’kmaq people and why it’s so important that the project combines different ways of knowing, including Western science and traditional Indigenous knowledge, which a Mi’kmaq elder dubbed ‘two eyed seeing.’

Further reading:

• “In Canada, Indigenous communities and scientists collaborate on marine research” (15 February 2022)

Further listening:

• “Podcast: Indigenous, ingenious and sustainable aquaculture from the distant past to today” (2 June 2022)

A researcher snorkels over a seagrass meadow. Image courtesy of Seawilding.

BUGS!

Macro portraits reveal the glamor and peril of endangered insects

Photographer Levon Biss captures the exquisite majesty of bugs—and the pressures that threaten them.

BY LAUREN J. YOUNG | PUBLISHED JUN 28, 2022 

This large stick bug, up to seven inches long, might seem hard to miss in the wild, but the insect slips under the radar, resembling lichens and leaves. Levon Biss

The Lord Howe Island stick insect might look more lobster than bug. Nicknamed the “land lobster,” this critter can grow up to seven inches long and gleams like polished obsidian among tree trunks and twigs, blending into the forest environment. For decades, Lord Howe Island, a small volcanic isle just northeast of Sydney, Australia, was the only known home of the species, Dryococelus australis. But in 1918, a shipwreck introduced predatory black rats that decimated the stick bug and many other native animals. Locals and biologists thought the insect was extinct until 2001, when a tiny population was discovered on a small nearby spired island, Ball’s Pyramid. Zoo and museum scientists are breeding the insects to restore this once-lost species and soon return it back to the wild—their original home on Lord Howe Island.

The Lord Howe Island stick insect represents one of 40 species brought to life in a new macrophotography exhibit, Extinct and Endangered: Insects in Peril, by photographer Levon Biss at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The large format photos not only reveal the insects’ diverse textures and minute hairs in vivid detail—they also shed light on these often overlooked creatures whose existence is threatened by human-induced climate change and other ongoing pressures.

“Right now, we’re just in the process of trying to quantify how much insects are in trouble,” says David Grimaldi, the museum’s invertebrate zoologist who curated the exhibit, in a video. “We have to rely on entomologists and other biologists to go out into the field and monitor insects, but we shouldn’t wait for the counts. We should start protecting natural areas.”

[Related: Do we still need to save the bees?]

Insects make up 80 percent of animal life on Earth, shaping a significant slice of our ecosystem from pollinating crops to decomposing waste. In 2017, a study in PLOS One revealed that more than 75 percent of the total biomass of flying insects in protected nature reserves in Germany had been lost over 27 years—scratching just the surface of an alarming trend of species diversity loss and insect population decline.

“Without hyperbole we’re in a very serious conundrum,” says Jessica Ware, entomologist and associate curator in invertebrate zoology at the museum, in AMNH’s press video. “Insects have undergone mass extinctions in the past, but right now the mass extinction that we’re seeing, that we’re witnessing, seems to be the largest that’s ever been recorded.”

With the power of macrophotography, Biss hopes that the insect portraits of Extinct and Endangered: Insects in Peril will be an eye-opening look at insects that showcases both their beauty and their value. These tiny creatures, Biss says in the video, go underappreciated despite being so important to humans and the planet.

“We need to understand that they’re important and we can’t just ignore them because they’re hard to see,” Biss says. “Hopefully people will walk away with an appreciation of them and they’ll marvel in them, and realize that they’re too beautiful to be lost, they’re too important to be lost.”

Images and specimen captions from Endangered: Insects in Peril are provided by AMNH.

Sabertooth longhorn beetle. Levon Biss

The sabertooth longhorn beetle, Macrodontia cervicornis, lives in the Amazon River basin and is among the longest beetles in the world. Habitat loss has contributed to its vulnerable status. The practice of collecting and selling these beetles—a single specimen can go for thousands of dollars—is another cause of their decline.

Stygian shadowdragon. Levon Biss

Dragonflies may be the most acrobatic fliers in the insect world, and stygian shadowdragons are no exception. Late in the twilight, they soar high above dark waters, swooping down to capture mosquitoes and other insect prey. Living near lakes and rivers in the eastern US and Canada, stygian shadowdragons, Neurocordulia yamaskanensis, start out life in the water. Females lay their eggs and larvae develop there, breathing through internal gills.

[Related: Inflatable tentacles and silk hats: See how caterpillars trick predators to survive]

For now, their numbers appear stable in some parts of their range, but in other areas they have completely disappeared. In coming years, climate change could have many detrimental effects on remaining populations. Much remains to be learned about how dragonfly larvae manage in northeastern rivers and lakes, and if those waters warm dramatically, the larvae may not be able to survive. Depending on how the waters are affected by heat, drought and other factors such as water pollution, researchers have estimated that more than 50 percent of this dragonfly species’ preferred river habitat could be lost as the climate shifts.

Raspa silkmoth. Levon Biss

The raspa silkmoth, Sphingicampa raspa, lives in hot, arid areas of Arizona, West Texas, and in Mexico, and depends on the “monsoon” season as part of its life cycle. If these reliable yearly rainstorms are affected by climate change, it could imperil these and other southwestern moths and butterflies.

Coral pink sand dunes tiger beetle, Cicindela albissima. 

Levon Biss


This colorful tiger beetle may look flashy, but in the pink sand dunes of its Utah habitat, its cream and green hues actually help the animal blend in. The cream forewings also help these beetles handle desert heat, by reflecting rather than absorbing sunlight. In the dunes, these tiger beetles are predators—note the insect’s curving mandibles, used to capture ants, flies, and other small prey.

The beetles’ tiny range lies on public lands, and researchers and wildlife officials there have closely monitored them for years. In low-rainfall years they have found the beetle population falls—a decline that may only become steeper with climate change. A different type of risk comes from people driving off-road vehicles over the dunes. To prevent the larvae in their burrows from being crushed, officials have set aside some conservation areas where the vehicles are now prohibited.

17-year cicada. Levon Biss

Every 17 years when the weather warms, millions of periodical cicadas (Magicicada septendecim) have a mass emergence, digging themselves out of the soil where they’ve been growing, climbing up trees, and splitting out of their skins into winged adults. But land clearing and development may destroy the underground nymphs before they can emerge and reproduce. And pesticides applied to lawns, golf courses, and parks seep into the ground where the nymphs feed.

Lauren J. Young is an Associate Editor at Popular Science where she covers health inequities, environmental justice, biodiversity, space exploration, history, and culture. Before joining PopSci in 2021, she was a digital producer and reporter at public radio’s Science Friday. Contact the author here.

GREEN CAPITALI$M

Spin-out company aiming to replace harmful plastic microbeads receives £1.3M investment

Sustainable cellulose start-up Naturbeads is poised to scale up

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY OF BATH

Naturbeads, a company set up by University of Bath researchers that aims to replace plastic microbeads with sustainable alternatives, is set to scale up its work after receiving £1.3M (€1.5M) in a recent funding round.

The investment from Italian Venture Capital fund Progress Tech Transfer, Eos Advisory and Proionic GmbH will allow Naturbeads to grow its work from pilot to demo plant scale and to expand the range of applications of its technology.

Naturbeads has developed a range of innovative and renewable biodegradable cellulose-based products that can be used in cosmetics, paints, coatings, additives for the oil and gas industry packaging and composites.

Following research carried out at Bath’s Centre for Sustainable and Circular Technologies (CSCT), the company was founded by Professor Davide Mattia from CSCT and the University’s Department of Chemical Engineering, the late Prof Janet Scott, formerly of CSCT and the Dept of Chemistry, and CEO Dr Giovanna Laudisio, an alumna of Bath’s School of Management.

Prof Davide Mattia said: “We are delighted to have received this investment, which will allow us to accelerate our work in providing a sustainable alternative to persistent microplastic beads. An estimated 30,000 tonnes end up in the world’s oceans each year, showing the clear need for technologies such as ours to be adopted quickly.”

Giovanna Laudisio added: “Raising funds for a hard tech start-up like Naturbeads is challenging but we are pleased that with this investment we are bringing on board two institutional investors like EOS and Progress Tech Transfer and a company like Proionic. I am confident that with their support we will be able to accelerate the commercialization of our technology and prevent hundreds of thousands of tons of microplastics from reaching the environment”.

Through a new collaboration with its subsidiary Naturbeads Italia and Professor Antonio Proto at the University of Salerno, the firm will explore the application of its technology in the tyre industry to reduce its contribution to microplastic pollution.

Alberto Calvo, partner of Progress Tech Transfer®, said: “We immediately understood the enormous potential of the technology developed by Naturbeads, which fits perfectly into our mission as early-stage, sustainability-driven investors. The company offers exciting prospects on global markets in a large number of industrial sectors which are desperately seeking for pragmatic solutions addressing the elimination of micro-plastics from their products, and Naturbeads is already positioned as a global technology leader in this arena.”

Andrew McNeill, Managing Partner of Eos Advisory, said: “Microbead plastic water pollution is a significant and hidden environment hazard that the world is only just starting to wake up to. As countries and industries restrict and ban their use, the market for biodegradable replacements is vast. What has really impressed Eos about Naturbeads is the people involved, the protections in place and the potential of this technology. This investment will support the scaling of Naturbeads production and route to market.”

Bernhard Ludwig, Executive Director of Proionic, said: “We are happy not only to supply the necessary solvent for the process but to further contribute to the development of what we consider a game-changing technology.”

Naturbeads has previously been funded by the University of Bath Impact Acceleration Account, Sky Ocean ventures, Innovate UK and the EPSRC.

Selenium removal from industrial wastewater focus of new research

Daniel Giammar, collaborators win prestigious NAWI grant

Beth Miller 06.21.2022

Industrial wastewater and agricultural draining waters can contain a variety of contaminants, such as the element selenium, that must be treated or removed. A multi-institutional team led by an engineer at Washington University in St. Louis seeks to refine a method that would remove selenium from wastewater efficiently and cost-effectively.

Daniel E. Giammar, the Walter E. Browne Professor of Environmental Engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering, will lead the team on the new research with $1.25 million in total funding. The project is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and through matching funds from Washington University in St. Louis and collaborators. The prestigious award is part of $17.7 million the Department of Energy awarded to 16 projects nationwide to bolster development of energy-efficient water-treatment technologies through the National Alliance for Water Innovation, led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Emerging technologies in selenium removal have focused on using electrocoagulation, a method that electrochemically introduces a metal ion, such as ferrous iron, to water to ultimately remove contaminants from wastewater in a few different ways: the release of ferrous iron from the anode introduces a reactive species that can remove dissolved selenium while reactions on the cathode may also be involved in selenium removal.

Over three years, Giammar and his collaborators from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Electric Power Research Institute and WaterTectonics plan to advance the use of iron electrocoagulation to remove selenium from water by tailoring the generation of solid particles to have targeted adsorption and reduction properties. They will evaluate their method in various settings, including batch reactors and in laboratory-scale continuous flow reactors with water from the power, mining and agricultural sectors, to develop a model to predict performance. In addition, they plan to develop a tool to assess the feasibility of electrocoagulation for this and two other NAWI projects underway at University of California, Los Angeles and Texas A&M University as well as for future research.

Also collaborating on the project is Jeffrey Catalano, professor of earth and planetary sciences at Washington University.

“Selenium is a challenging contaminant to remove from water, but it has rich chemistry to potentially be used in new technologies,” Giammar said. “The operation of selenium removal technologies is strongly dependent on context, which prevents a one-size-fits-all solution. We plan to address the need for modular technologies that can be operated autonomously and replace the need for chemical supplies with electricity.”
The McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis promotes independent inquiry and education with an emphasis on scientific excellence, innovation and collaboration without boundaries. McKelvey Engineering has top-ranked research and graduate programs across departments, particularly in biomedical engineering, environmental engineering and computing, and has one of the most selective undergraduate programs in the country. With 140 full-time faculty, 1,387 undergraduate students, 1,448 graduate students and 21,000 living alumni, we are working to solve some of society’s greatest challenges; to prepare students to become leaders and innovate throughout their careers; and to be a catalyst of economic development for the St. Louis region and beyond.

Study shows chemical's extent in the Fairbanks winter air

by Rod Boyce, University of Alaska Fairbanks

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A chemical compound discovered in 2019 in the wintertime air of Fairbanks, Alaska accounts for a significant portion of the community's fine particulate pollution, according to new research that seeks to better understand the causes and makeup of the dirty air.

The finding is the first measurement of how much hydroxymethanesulfonate, or HMS, is in the Fairbanks air.

The compound constituted 3% to 7% of the total amount of particles less than 2.5 micrometers, or PM2.5, during pollution episodes. That amount is substantially higher than observed elsewhere, leading the research team to conclude that Fairbanks's extreme low temperatures are a factor in the compound's formation.

"People in the community really are not aware of this," said Jingqiu Mao, principal investigator on the research. "We feel it's important to inform the community about this new chemical compound in Fairbanks."

"Very little is known about the health impact of hydroxymethanesulfonate," he said. "This compound is new to us in the atmospheric chemistry and air quality communities. We didn't know this compound could be so abundant."

The research was published in May in Environmental Science & Technology and authored by James Campbell, a graduate student of Mao. The work included scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

The research paper is the first produced under a three-year National Science Foundation grant.

Fairbanks has been under mandate by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to improve its wintertime air quality and has been working for years to do so. The community and state face penalties for non-compliance.

The new HMS finding is also significant because recent studies have revealed that hydroxymethanesulfonate can easily be mistaken for sulfate, potentially making prior air pollution measurements inaccurate. Studying HMS also enables a better understanding of other chemical reactions in ambient aerosols in Fairbanks during the winter months.

Knowing the correct makeup of the fine particulate matter pollution is key to implementing appropriate air quality control measures, Mao said.

"A lot of sources contribute to PM2.5," he said. "But when you start thinking about improving air quality, which part should be dealt with first? And what are the consequences of that?"

The research team studied Fairbanks's air in two winters: January to March 2020 and December 2020 to February 2021. Data came from instruments placed near the UAF Community and Technical College in downtown Fairbanks and at a nearby state Department of Environmental Conservation site already measuring total PM2.5, sulfur dioxide and temperature.

Scientists have known that hydroxymethanesulfonate forms through the combination of sulfur dioxide and formaldehyde, which combine when they are attracted to liquid particles in the atmosphere.

Scientists don't know, however, to what extent factors such as the acidity of the atmospheric droplets, temperature and humidity lead to HMS formation.

They also don't know which source is most responsible for HMS formation in Fairbanks. Sulfur dioxide comes from combustion of fossil fuels, including heating oil and coal. Formaldehyde likely gets into the air from burning wood.

Studies have shown that wood smoke contributes 40% to 70% to the wintertime PM2.5 mass concentration in Fairbanks.

"Fairbanks is one of the few optimal places for HMS formation," Mao said. "And that is not necessarily a good thing."

Alaska air pollution holds clues for other Arctic climates

More information: James R. Campbell et al, Source and Chemistry of Hydroxymethanesulfonate (HMS) in Fairbanks, Alaska, Environmental Science & Technology (2022). DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.2c00410

Journal information: Environmental Science & Technology 

Provided by University of Alaska Fairbanks 

GREEN CAPITALI$M

Here Comes the Sun – Daniel Weeks, Revision Energy and the Fight for a Livable World

Dan Weeks and his wife Dr. Sindiso Mnisi Weeks

By WAYNE D. KING, Radical Centrist

My conversation with Dan Weeks was a refreshingly optimistic moment in these troubling times. He’s no Pollyanna about the challenges that we face but he definitely sees the magnificent and expansive view from the summit, even as he recognizes the mountains still to climb.

Listen here:
https://feeds.podetize.com/ep/XjHX_LDuK/media

A 12th-generation Granite Stater, Dan Weeks is well steeped in New Hampshire history but he is also a citizen of the world. Dan left New Hampshire after high school to serve with AmeriCorps and attend Yale and Oxford on scholarships. He lived and worked on four continents before returning to NH with his South African wife Dr. Sindiso Mnisi Weeks, a human rights lawyer and academic. Dan and Sindiso are the proud parents of three young children.

Today Dan is a director at ReVision Energy, an employee-owned solar company in Brentwood. and lives in Nashua with his wife and kids.

Dan is an outspoken clean energy advocate and entrepreneur on a mission to transition New England and the world from fossil fuels to renewable energy. As Vice President of Business Development at ReVision Energy, Dan leads commercial sales, project finance, and development for the region’s largest clean energy company while promoting climate action at the state and federal level. He has been named one of New Hampshire’s “Most Influential Business Leaders” by NH Business Review, “Young Professional of the Year” by Stay Work Play New Hampshire, and “Forty Under 40” by the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Flooding exacerbates pollution exposure in at-risk urban communities

by Amy McCaig, Rice University

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Increased flooding in the U.S. is exposing more people to industrial pollution, especially in racially marginalized urban communities, according to new research from Rice University, New York University and Brown University.

Thomas Marlow, a postdoctoral fellow at NYU Abu Dhabi, said industrial activity has not only contributed to climate change, but also left behind enormous amounts of land-based contamination that will continue to put people at risk when floodwaters rise. Marlow is the lead author of "Future Flooding Increases Unequal Exposure Risks to Relic Industrial Pollution," published today in Environmental Research Letters.

"We wanted to investigate where those dynamics will affect different communities in the years ahead," he said.

The scholars focused on six different U.S. cities (Houston; Philadelphia; Minneapolis; Portland, Oregon; New Orleans; and Providence, Rhode Island), combining historical data on former hazardous manufacturing facilities with future flood risks projected down to the address level. They found that more than 6,000 former industrial sites likely still to be sources of significant ground pollution are at elevated flood risk over the next 30 years. These sites are disproportionately located in lower-income communities of color.

"We found that the sites of highest concern cluster and create zones of increasing risk in areas where more than 560,000 residents currently live," said Jim Elliott, professor and chair of sociology at Rice. "Analyses further indicate that racial minorities, those with lower incomes and those residing in multiunit housing disproportionately live in these areas, regardless of the city in question."

Scott Frickel, professor of sociology at Brown, said the findings show an urgent need for new cleanup strategies.

"Specifically, we need to rethink site-based strategies for cleaning up urban lands polluted by past industrial activities," he said. "This work must engage and include residents of historically marginalized communities in planning efforts as government agencies at all levels work to make their cities more resilient and environmentally just in the age of climate change."

"The good news is that if we act now, we can not only tackle the problem but also help build more just and resilient cities," Elliott concluded.

The researchers plan to build on this work by assisting local for-profit and nonprofit organizations to address the challenges of urban flooding.Flood buyouts disproportionately benefit whitest at-risk neighborhoods in cities

More information: Thomas Marlow et al, Future flooding increases unequal exposure risks to relic industrial pollution, Environmental Research Letters (2022). DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ac78f7

Journal information: Environmental Research Letters 

Provided by Rice University