Cynthia Rosenzweig, a senior research scientist and head of the Climate Impacts Group at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, received the 2022 World Food Prize from the World Food Prize Foundation on May 5. According to the World Food Prize Foundation, the World Food Prize is a prestigious international award conceived as the “Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture” with a mission to elevate innovations and inspire action to sustainably increase the quality, quantity, and availability of food for all.

Rosenzweig was selected for the award for her research to understand the relationship between climate and food systems and forecast how both will change in the future. Her modeling work has provided a foundation for decision-makers around the world to create strategies to mitigate climate change and adapt our food systems to a changing planet, which has helped communities worldwide address the consequences of Earth’s changing climate.

“I am thrilled and honored to receive the World Food Prize this year because food systems are now emerging as a key component of climate change,” said Rosenzweig.

Rosenzweig has been a research scientist at NASA GISS and head of the Climate Impacts Group since 1994. Her research focuses on improving models and assessments of how climate change will affect agriculture and the food supply in the future. In addition, she uses data from NASA satellites and models to study agricultural regions around the world and how they are changing. Rosenzweig has previously served as coordinating lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 and the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land in 2019.

She is also a co-founder of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP), an international project using climate science, crop modeling, and economic modeling to understand crop yield and food security in a changing climate. Over 1,000 researchers from developed and developing nations have partnered with AgMIP to improve agricultural models and techniques to assess the future impacts of climate change on agriculture and food systems both regionally and globally. Through AgMIP, Rosenzweig has worked on research projects studying the effects of rising atmospheric carbon dioxide on crops as well as quantifying greenhouse gas emissions released through food production.

“I’m proud of Dr. Rosenzweig’s dedication to improving agricultural models and capabilities that improve life around the globe,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “On behalf of the entire NASA community, I want to congratulate her on this accomplishment. As our climate changes, NASA will continue working to understand the impact of more intense weather events that increasingly strain the worldwide food supply. We’ll continue to support scientists like Dr. Rosenzweig as we plan for the future in a changing climate.”

Scientists like Rosenzweig are already using agricultural data from NASA’s fleet of Earth-observing satellites to understand food production and security in a changing climate. Modeling drought, water availability, changing surface temperature, and other factors helps scientists like Rosenzweig understand crop yields and how they are changing. In the future, NASA’s upcoming Earth System Observatory will provide more key information to guide understanding of how climate change impacts food and agriculture.

“Congratulations to Dr. Rosenzweig on this accomplishment,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA GISS. “This award and Dr. Rosenzweig’s work is a great example of the value of NASA’s research to help people around the world and in meeting our mission to innovate for the benefit of humanity.”

For more information about the World Food Prize visit: https://www.worldfoodprize.org/

For more information about Cynthia Rosenzweig: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/crosenzweig.html

Research published in the journal Science of the Total Environment found that differences in exposure to fine and ultrafine particle pollution could be reduced between 20 and 40% in 2050 if solar, wind and electric sources were used rather than fossil fuels.

The findings factor in California’s ban on the sale of new gas-powered passenger vehicles beginning in 2035 and illustrate the need to focus beyond transportation pollution, which has been a significant source of climate-damaging emissions.

“Even though transportation pollution has been largely decreased by 2050, the other sectors will still be important,” said Yiting Li, a Ph.D. candidate in atmospheric sciences who is the first author on the journal article.

Energy, climate and emissions

The UC Davis researchers analyzed future energy use and emissions scenarios in four regions — the San Francisco Bay area including Sacramento, San Joaquin Valley, Los Angeles and San Diego. The energy scenarios ranged from business as usual to strict reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

All California residents benefitted from improved air quality when low-carbon fuels, carbon capture or other actions were adopted, the analysis showed.

The analysis also showed that adopting low-carbon fuels can help address some of the historical imbalances in air pollution exposure. For example, Black residents experience higher levels of pollution than white residents in Los Angeles, but the detailed analysis carried out in the study showed that using larger quantities of low-carbon fuels reduced those exposure disparities. Similar results were found in other regions, with the groups living closest to the urban cores benefitting the most.

“Not only does it improve air quality, but it also shrinks the disparity among different groups,” said Michael Kleeman, the study’s senior author and professor of civil and environmental engineering who is also a member of the Atmospheric Science Graduate Group and the Institute for Transportation Studies. “It levels the playing field for all California residents.”

Environmental justice and low carbon fuels

Knowing this information can help round out policy discussions about cutting pollution levels by incorporating environmental justice aspects, the researchers said.

“We often talk about low carbon fuels and greenhouse gas reductions, but there’s not a lot of talk about public health,” Kleeman said. “The public health benefits associated with low carbon fuels should be a part of these conversations.”

The study also estimated that adopting low-carbon fuels would prevent thousands of deaths in California each year through improved air quality. In economic terms, the total public health benefits were estimated to be approximately $20 billion annually.

Anikender Kumar and Yin Li from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering also contributed to the analysis.

Funding for the research came from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of California – Davis. Original written by Emily C. Dooley. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Because we shouldn’t only act for the Earth on April 22, Earth911 is honoring the 52 years that Earth Day has been inspiring action with 52 Actions for the Earth. The Earth Day theme this year is investing in the planet. Each week from Earth Day 2022 to Earth Day 2023, we will share an action you can take to invest in the Earth and make your own life more sustainable.

This week, you can invest in the Earth by protecting bees.

Action: Dispose of Pesticides

Benefits of Bees

Honeybees contribute to the pollination of 84% of the crops grown for human consumption (a third of all the food we eat) as well as many crops grown for livestock. The commercial value of honeybees in the U.S. alone has been estimated at over $15 billion per year. Meanwhile, native bumblebees and solitary bee species are even more efficient pollinators of wildflowers and native plants. Bees are a keystone to both agriculture and ecosystems.

Colony Collapse

But populations of honeybees have dropped a shocking 90% since the ‘90s due to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Although the mass die-off seems to have stopped, numbers are still low, and it will take years to rebuild the honeybee population to healthy levels. The causes of CCD are still unexplained, but researchers think it results from a combination of stressors including parasites and pesticide use.

CCD only affects European honeybees, but nearly a quarter of native bee species are also experiencing population declines and range reductions. Native bee species are being affected by habitat loss and fragmentation as well as – you guessed it – pesticides.

Pesticide Pollution

You don’t need to keep your own hive or convert your lawn into a wildlife habitat (although those are both great things to do) to help bees of all kinds thrive. The most important thing you can do to support bee populations is to eliminate pesticides from your garden. A class of pesticides called neonicotinoids is particularly harmful to bees and many of them have been banned in the European Union. They are still permitted in the U.S. despite repeated attempts to ban them. Although still legal, EPA advises homeowners against their use and proposes to ban the use of one of them, imidacloprid, on residential lawns and turf.

Clean Up Your Pesticides

For the benefit of bees (and humans and other wildlife), home gardeners should look for nontoxic pest control alternatives and practice organic gardening.

This week, go through your basement, garage, or garden shed and collect all the pesticides. Check their ingredients lists for the following:

• acetamiprid
• clothianidin
• dinotefurandis
• imidacloprid
• thiamethoxam
• sulfoxaflor
• flupyradifurone
• fipronil

Do not dispose of these pesticides in the trash. Contact your local solid waste utility and follow their policy for disposal of household hazardous waste (HHW). Many municipalities will collect HHW for free; elsewhere, companies like Clean Harbors and Waste Management accept HHW for a fee. If there is no safe local disposal program where you live, use up the rest of the pesticide by following the directions carefully. Then recycle the empty container.

At the time of their collection, these specimens were key to proving that some mammals lay eggs — a fact that changed the course of scientific thinking and supported the theory of evolution.

This unique collection had not been catalogued by the Museum, so until recently staff had been unaware of its existence. The exciting find was made when Jack Ashby, Assistant Director at the Museum, was doing research for a new book on Australian mammals.

“It’s one thing to read the 19^th century announcements that platypuses and echidnas actually lay eggs. But to have the physical specimens here, tying us back to that discovery almost 150 years ago, is pretty amazing,” said Ashby.

He added: “I knew from experience that there isn’t a natural history collection on Earth that actually has a comprehensive catalogue of everything in it, and I suspected that Caldwell’s specimens really ought to be here.” He was right: three months after Ashby asked Collections Manager Mathew Lowe to keep an eye out, a small box of specimens was found in the Museum with a note suggesting they were Caldwell’s. Ashby’s investigations confirmed this was indeed the case.

Until Europeans first encountered platypuses and echidnas in the 1790s, it had been assumed that all mammals give birth to live young. The question of whether some mammals lay eggs then became one of the biggest questions of 19^th century zoology, and hotly debated in scientific circles. The newly discovered collection of little jars represents the huge scientific endeavour that went into solving this mystery.

“In the nineteenth century, many conservative scientists didn’t want to believe that an egg-laying mammal could exist, because this would support the theory of evolution — the idea that one animal group was capable of changing into another,” said Ashby.

He added: “Lizards and frogs lay eggs, so the idea of a mammal laying eggs was dismissed by many people — I think they felt it was degrading to be related to animals that they considered ‘lower life forms.'”

The newly discovered collection includes echidnas, platypuses and marsupials at varying life stages from fertilised egg to adolescence. Caldwell was the first to make complete collections of every life stage of these species — although not all of the specimens have been found in the Museum.

For 85 years, European naturalists had been attempting to find proof that platypuses and echidnas lay eggs — including by asking Aboriginal Australians — but any results they sent home were ignored or dismissed.

William Caldwell was sent to Australia in 1883 — with substantial financial backing from the University of Cambridge, the Royal Society and the British Government — to resolve the long-standing mystery.

In an extensive search Caldwell collected around 1,400 specimens with the help of a large group of Aboriginal Australians. In 1884 the team eventually found an echidna with an egg in her pouch, and a platypus with one egg in her nest and another just about to be laid.

This was the definitive proof Caldwell had been looking for, and the news was sent around the world. The colonial scientific establishment was apparently only willing to accept this result now that it had been confirmed by ‘one of their own’.

Ashby says that over the last two centuries, scientists have consistently belittled Australian mammals by describing them as strange and inferior. He believes that this language continues to affect how we describe them today, and undermines efforts to conserve them.

“Platypuses and echidnas are not weird, primitive animals — as many historic accounts depict them — they are as evolved as anything else. It’s just that they’ve never stopped laying eggs,” he said, adding, “I think they’re absolutely amazing and definitely worth valuing.”

The quill-covered echidnas are the most widespread mammal in Australia. They cover the whole continent and have adapted to live in all climates — from snow-covered mountains through to the driest deserts.

Platypuses are one of the only mammals that can detect electricity, and one of the only mammals to produce venom. With a tail like a beaver, a flat bill, and webbed feet like a duck, when the first specimens were brought to Europe people thought they were fakes that had been sewn together.

Both platypuses and echidnas have a unique combination of traits that 19th century scientists thought should only exist individually in either mammals, reptiles or birds. This made them central to debates around evolution.

Ashby’s new book, Platypus Matters: The Extraordinary Story of Australian Mammals, is published in the UK on 12 May, 2022 by Harper Collins.

“Coral reefs are an essential ecosystem on our planet,” said Andrea Grottoli, co-author of the study and a professor in earth sciences at the Ohio State University. “Coral reefs are really important for humans in that they provide protection to coastlines from erosion and storms, and they’re essential for certain services like tourism and other parts of the economy.”

The study, published in the journal Global Change Biology, advocates for the use of mesoscale sanctuaries, or areas that can stretch thousands of miles, often across national boundaries, to protect these ocean environments.

“Global warming is the No. 1 threat to coral reefs right now,” Grottoli said. “So when we think about coral reef conservation, we can’t limit ourselves to arbitrary geographic boundaries.”

Providing a “continuum of conservation” would benefit reefs immensely, Grottoli said. But because conservation policies differ between various governments and politicians, that can make it hard to protect the environment.

Although coral reefs occupy less than 0.1% of the surface area in Earth’s oceans, about 30% of all marine species are in some way associated with them, Grottoli said. But due to the stress of rising sea temperatures, coral reefs all over the world have experienced higher rates of coral bleaching, or the visible paling of the coral surface.

Under coral bleaching, the animal’s skeleton, once obscured, becomes visible, and effectively turns the creature a faded, ghostly white. Although bleached coral is not immediately dead, it can lead to mass mortality. Researchers say mass bleaching events are an indicator of an ecosystem’s declining health.

Many people may be most familiar with coral via the Great Barrier Reef, a complex coral system so large that the living structure can be spotted from space. Located just off the coast of Australia, upwards of 2 million tourists visit the region each year. The attraction brings in an annual estimated economic value of about $36 billion.

Yet despite being the world’s most protected marine area, the GBR was recently hit by another mass bleaching event, the fourth time in only six years.

While climate change has undoubtedly contributed to the increases in frequency and intensity of these events, warming seas are also changing the composition and architectural complexity of coral reefs. “Under this reality, the future of coral reefs may appear grim,” the paper said.

But there is some good news. Even as the global population of coral dwindles, the genetic diversity of coral species helps ensure that some corals may be able to adapt and recover. And while there is an urgent need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, the study also suggests that in the meantime, we need to take broad transdisciplinary approaches to creating both local and large-scale ocean sanctuaries.

Grottoli believes much of the heavy lifting of saving coral will happen through education.

“People who understand coral reefs, and who understand the value of coral reefs, are much more likely to do something to help protect them,” she said. “If you don’t know anything about coral, and you’ve never seen one, how can you have any empathy or feel any connection to that ecosystem?”

In her role as president of the International Coral Reef Society, Grottoli and her colleagues even put together a series of actions individuals can take at home to help scientists’ conservation efforts.

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Ohio State University. Original written by Tatyana Woodall. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Though climate change is driving sea level rise over time, researchers also believe that differences in surface height from place to place in the ocean can affect Earth’s climate. These highs and lows are associated with currents and eddies, swirling rivers in the ocean, that influence how it absorbs atmospheric heat and carbon.

Enter the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, a joint effort of NASA and French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES), with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the United Kingdom Space Agency. Launching in November 2022, SWOT will collect data on ocean heights to study currents and eddies up to five times smaller than have been previously detectable. It will also gather detailed information on freshwater lakes and rivers.

Observing the ocean at relatively small scales will help scientists assess its role in moderating climate change. The planet’s largest storehouse of atmospheric heat and carbon, the ocean has absorbed more than 90% of the heat trapped by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

Much of the continued uptake of that heat – and the excess carbon dioxide and methane that produced it – is thought to occur around currents and eddies less than 12 miles (20 kilometers) across. These flows are small relative to currents such as the Gulf Stream and the California Current, but researchers estimate that in the aggregate they transfer up to half the heat and carbon from surface waters to the ocean’s depths.

Better understanding this phenomenon may be key to determining whether there’s a ceiling to the ocean’s ability to absorb heat and carbon from human activities.

“What is the turning point at which the ocean starts releasing huge amounts of heat back into the atmosphere and accelerating global warming, rather than limiting it?” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, SWOT’s program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “SWOT can help answer one of the most critical climate questions of our time.”

Thinking Small

Existing satellites can’t detect smaller-scale currents and eddies, limiting research into how those features interact with each other and with larger-scale flows.

“That’s a place where we will learn a lot from having better observations of the small scales,” said J. Thomas Farrar, a SWOT oceanography science lead with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

In addition to helping researchers study the climate impacts of small currents, SWOT’s ability to “see” smaller areas of Earth’s surface will allow it to collect more precise data along coastlines, where rising ocean levels and the flow of currents can have immediate impacts on land ecosystems and human activity.

Higher seas, for example, can cause storm surges to penetrate farther inland. Also, currents intensified by sea level rise may increase saltwater intrusion into deltas, estuaries, and wetlands, as well as groundwater supplies.

“In the open ocean, the whole phenomenon of drawing down heat and carbon will affect humanity for years to come,” said Lee-Lueng Fu, the SWOT project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “But in coastal waters, the effects of currents and sea height are felt over days and weeks. They affect human lives directly.”

So how will measuring ocean height lead to better knowledge of currents and eddies?

Researchers use height differences between points – known as the slope – to calculate the motion of currents. The math accounts for the force of Earth’s gravity, which pulls water from high to low, and the planet’s rotation, which, in the Northern Hemisphere, bends the flow clockwise around high points and counterclockwise around low points. The effect is the opposite in the south.

Systems of currents hundreds of miles wide flow around broad expanses of the ocean. Along the way, smaller currents and eddies spin off and interact with one another. When they come together, they drive water from the surface downward to colder depths, taking along heat and carbon from the atmosphere. When those smaller currents and eddies flow apart, water from those colder depths rises to the surface, ready to absorb heat and carbon again.

This vertical movement of heat and carbon also occurs at eddies themselves. In the Northern Hemisphere, clockwise eddies generate downward flows, while counterclockwise eddies create upward flows. The reverse occurs in the Southern Hemisphere.

Filling in the Gaps

By measuring ocean heights down to 0.16-inch (0.4-centimeter) increments, as well as their slopes, SWOT’s two Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) antennas will help researchers discern currents and eddies as small as 12 miles (20 kilometers) across.

SWOT will also employ a nadir altimeter, an older technology that can identify currents and eddies down to about 60 miles (100 kilometers) wide. Where the nadir altimeter will point straight down and take data in one dimension, the KaRIn antennas will tilt. This will enable the KaRIn antennas to scan the surface in two dimensions and, working in tandem, collect data with greater precision than the nadir altimeter alone.

“Currently, to get a two-dimensional view from a one-dimensional line, we take all of our one-dimensional lines and estimate what’s happening between them,” said Rosemary Morrow, a SWOT oceanography science lead at Laboratoire d’Études en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales in Toulouse, France. “SWOT will directly observe what’s in the gaps.”

More About the Mission

SWOT is being jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the CSA and the UK Space Agency. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA is providing the KaRIn instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. CNES is providing the Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) system, nadir altimeter, the KaRIn RF subsystem (with support from the UK Space Agency), the platform, and ground control segment. CSA is providing the KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly. NASA is providing the launch vehicle and associated launch services.

To learn more about the mission, visit:

https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/

News Media Contacts

Andrew Wang / Jane J. Lee

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

626-379-6874 / 818-354-0307

[email protected] / [email protected]

In 2018, an international research group bored for soil samples in three sites around the Isfjorden fjord in Svalbard, which is part of Norway. The same phenomenon was seen each boring site: mineral soil covered by a thin layer of organic matter. In other words, this layer contains a lot of carbon extracted from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.

The research group headed by researcher Minna Väliranta from the University of Helsinki has given the name ‘proto-peat’ to such organic soil accumulations, which are composed mostly of moss formed in increasingly warm arctic climate conditions.

“It’s not yet peat in the actual sense of the word, but you could say it’s the starting point for the formation of peat,” says Väliranta, who works at the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences. The research group also includes Teemu Juselius and Sanna Piilo, doctoral researchers under Väliranta’s supervision.

Such proto-peat deposits elicit interest also internationally. Väliranta is involved in a larger project funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), a British institution corresponding to the Academy of Finland. This project investigates precisely the same phenomenon, that is, whether global warming has already led to the spread of peatland vegetation into the Arctic. This spread of vegetation is part of a more extensive phenomenon known as ‘arctic greening’, which commonly refers to increasing shrub growth in the Arctic, as vascular plants spread to regions previously barren.

“If this process that generates proto-peat occurs extensively, an unexpected carbon reservoir, or a plant community that mitigates climate change, may be in the process of establishing itself in the north. This reservoir has not been included in the modelling of ecosystems and the atmosphere, as it has traditionally been thought that no new peatlands are formed,” Väliranta notes.

Climate-ecosystem models are continually evolving, and only recently have attempts been made to include the impact of peatlands in such models.

“You can say that the discovery of new carbon sinks brings into play a new component that must be considered in models to better predict the functioning of ecosystems in a warming climate,” Väliranta says.

Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Helsinki. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Taking action for the Earth shouldn’t be limited to Earth Day. So Earth911 is honoring the 52 years that Earth Day has been inspiring action with 52 Actions for the Earth. The Earth Day theme this year is investing in the planet. Each week from Earth Day 2022 to Earth Day 2023, we will share an action you can take to invest in the Earth and make your own life more sustainable.

This week, you can invest in the Earth by supporting global climate literacy.

Climate Literacy

To halt climate change, we need a global shift to a green economy. That kind of change requires significant action from individuals, governments, and businesses. But people don’t act for change when they don’t understand the problem, and right now, scientists seem to be the only ones who really understand the essential principles of Earth’s climate system. Too many of us don’t even meet the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce) standard for basic climate literacy: understanding your influence on climate and climate’s influence on you and your society.

Just as the industrial revolution prompted the establishment of a public education system and the space race spurred a focus on STEM, climate literacy is a prerequisite for a green economy. That’s why EarthDay.org is campaigning for universal climate education. As part of their STEM education, every student in every school in the world should receive fully integrated, assessed climate and environmental education with a strong civic engagement component.

Climate Illiterate

This is far from the case right now. In the U.S., K-12 curriculum standards are determined at the state level. Twenty-nine states and Washington, D.C., have state science standards that include human-caused climate change. Fifteen states require climate change but don’t specify its cause. Five states only require including climate change in elective high school science courses. Pennsylvania’s standards do not address climate change at all. This lack of education means that only 60% of Americans understand that climate change is a major threat.

Across 33 African countries, climate change literacy varies substantially, but the knowledge level appears to be slightly higher than in the U.S. Overall, 71% of Africans say climate change needs to be stopped and 51% feel they can do something to help. Across Europe, 47% of people view climate change as the biggest challenge, but there’s some indication that nearly that many believe it’s too late to make a difference. Meanwhile, in China nearly three-quarters of Chinese people consider climate change a major threat. Even more — nearly 80% — confidently believe that climate change can be reversed.

Action:  Tell Global Leaders to Commit to Climate and Environmental Education

COP27

It seems like COP26 in Glasgow just wrapped up, but it’s not too early to prepare for COP27. Governments will meet at the Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November for further discussion of actions to meet the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

EarthDay.org will submit a letter to the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Patricia Espinosa requesting the Paris Agreement signatory governments to give climate literacy the same importance as any other key subject. To that end, they request governments to make climate education:

• compulsory,
• assessed,
• linked to civic engagement,
• and integrated into the standard curriculum for all K-12 students.

Act now: Sign the letter.