The global effects of increasing wildfires in Siberia have been modeled by researchers at Hokkaido University and colleagues at the University of Tokyo and Kyushu University. The results, published in the journal Earth’s Future, suggest significant and widespread effects on air quality, climate, health, and economics under the most extreme wildfire scenarios.

The authors performed global numerical simulation experiments to evaluate how the increased intensity of wildfires in Siberia would affect air quality, premature mortality, and economy through increased atmospheric aerosols (air pollution particles) under the present climate and near-future global warming scenarios.

“Our modeling reveals a cooling effect broadly across the northern hemisphere and worsened air quality in extensive downwind regions,” says Associate Professor Teppei Yasunari of the Hokkaido team.

A major impact of wildfires on the atmosphere is their emission of atmospheric aerosols — mixtures of tiny particles suspended in the air. These aerosols affect air quality and can have wide-ranging effects on climate.

This research focused on the Siberian wildfires using a Japanese global climate modeling system called the Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate version 5 (MIROC5), combined with other models, such as the aerosol model SPRINTARS. The analysis combined atmospheric effects with exploring coupled influences between the atmosphere and the oceans.

The simulated atmospheric cooling effect across broad areas throughout the northern hemisphere is likely linked to the reflection of sunlight from the aerosol particles. The research suggests this may induce a partial suppression of warming under the near-future global warming conditions near the Siberian wildfire areas.

Under the most extreme wildfire scenario, another significant impact will be worsened air quality due to particulate and gas (aerosol precursor) pollution emissions, not only in the local regions but also across large areas of East Asia that are generally downwind of the wildfires.

“Our results suggest that increased efforts are needed to limit the effects of the Siberian wildfires somehow to prevent excess deaths, respiratory and other illnesses, and economic losses because it is hard to prevent the occurrence of Siberian wildfires in such large areas,” Yasunari says.

The modeling suggests that the estimated direct impact of increased deaths due to air pollution could incur health-related costs in the order of 10 billion US dollars annually. However, this study did not consider substantial further costs and secondary social effects that could result from non-fatal illnesses, leading to workplace absences and reduced educational opportunities. Therefore, a greater level of costs may be possible in reality.

The surprisingly broad significance of wildfires in Siberia assessed by the global sensitivity simulations with the global climate model suggests that the model’s performance should be further refined to allow quantitatively improved estimated impacts that will assist efforts to understand and mitigate the effects.

“Our findings send a critical message about the broad effect of increased particulate matter due to massive wildfires in the atmosphere on climate and air quality, which will become ever more significant as the worldwide changes due to global warming proceed,” Yasunari concludes.

But a study by University of Rhode Island researchers has found direct evidence of a species — the American woodcock, a migratory shorebird from eastern and central North America — that overlaps periods of migration and reproduction, a rare breeding strategy known as “itinerant breeding.” Their work, backed by collaborators across the East Coast, was published today in the biological sciences journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“I think this is a very exciting moment for bird researchers,” said Colby Slezak, a URI Ph.D. student in biological and environmental sciences who led the study. “It’s interesting to see that these distinct periods in a bird’s annual cycle are not so cut and dried. We often think of migration, breeding, fall migration and wintering as separate events. But woodcock are combining two of these into one period, which is interesting because both are so energetically expensive.”

“Each year the period of migration is distinct from the period of breeding in the vast majority of migratory birds, presumably because doing so at the same time is simply too costly,” said Scott McWilliams, URI professor in natural resources science and principal investigator on the study. “This paper provides the best documented case of a migratory bird that is an itinerant breeder. Such itinerant breeding is exceptionally rare, and documenting exceptions often proves the rules of nature.”

The American woodcock — also called a timberdoodle, bogsucker, night partridge, and Labrador twister, among many more — is a migratory shorebird that occurs throughout eastern and central North America but its populations have been declining over the past half century. The species is known for its long, needlelike bill that can extract earthworms from deep in the ground and the males’ elaborate mating dance and “peent” call to attract females, Slezak said.

While there are about a dozen bird species in the world believed to be itinerant breeders, the study is the first to show direct evidence of the rare strategy. “They’ve suspected other species of being itinerant breeders, but this is the first time we’ve had detailed GPS-tracking data and on-the-ground verification of nests to confirm that this was happening.” said Slezak, of Broadalbin, New York.

To do that, the study benefitted from the work of scores of biologists from federal, state and non-governmental agencies along the American woodcock’s flyway, from the southern U.S. into Canada, who tagged more than 350 females with GPS transmitters between 2019 and 2022. That initiative was part of the University of Maine’s Eastern Woodcock Migration Research Cooperative.

Slezak, whose work on the study was part of his dissertation research, organized and analyzed the tracking data and alerted collaborators along the bird’s range to verify possible nesting locations. URI graduate students Liam Corcoran, Megan Gray and Shannon Wesson also worked on other aspects of the woodcock project, all part of a collaborative research program with biologists from the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management Division of Fish & Wildlife.

“I was looking for really short movement patterns during the breeding season to find suspected nests,” Slezak said. “Relying on all of these collaborators from across the East Coast, I would reach out to them to tell them there was a suspected nest. They would travel out to the sites, sometimes quite far. It was amazing that we got the buy-in that we did.”

Based on GPS tracking of more than 200 females, the URI study found that more than 80% of the tagged females nested more than once during migration — some up to six times. During northward migration, females traveled an average of 800 kilometers between first and second nests, and shorter distances between subsequent nests, the study said. During 2021-22, URI researchers oversaw onsite verification of 26 nests from 22 females. Four females nested more than once, three of which migrated a substantial distance northward after their first nest attempt, the study said.

“There are many records of woodcock males singing along their migration routes, which has always been a mystery because it’s energetically expensive,” said Slezak. “With this new data on females, we’re seeing that females are also nesting in the south early, moving north and nesting as they go. So, these males are probably getting breeding opportunities along the way.”

While migration and reproduction take a lot of energy, American woodcock reduce the cost in other ways, Slezak said. They have shorter migration distances than other species and have the flexibility of using various young-forest habitats. Also, females are larger than males and their eggs are small relative to the size of the females.

“A lot of birds probably can’t do it because they don’t have these lower reproductive costs that woodcock have evolved to do,” he said.

Another evolutionary driver of itinerant breeding in woodcock could be predation. While they use a variety of habitats — wetlands, young forests with different tree types — they often nest near edges of open fields, leaving them prone to numerous predators.

“We think most of these post-nesting migratory movements are in response to predation events,” he said. “They’re sitting on the nest and something comes and eats the eggs. The female takes off and keeps migrating north before trying to nest again. What we don’t know is: if the female has a successful nest, does she stop nesting the rest of the year?”

Despite steady declines in woodcock populations and their preferred young forest habitat over the last half century, the study offers a glimmer of hope for woodcock, and other itinerant breeders facing the challenges of ongoing human development and climate change.

“Itinerant breeders may be more flexible in their response to environmental change because they are willing to breed in a wide variety of places,” said Slezak. “So as long as some suitable habitat remains, the consequences may be less.”

Have you ever considered how our perspective of climate change might shift if we focused not just on the sky above us but also on the earth beneath our feet? On Earth Day, let’s explore the role of plants, soils, and climate moderation, a tale often overshadowed by the buzz of greenhouse gases.

Human activities are not only carbon loading the air with rising greenhouse gases and drastically altering our land and sea. We’re cutting down trees, scraping away topsoil, eroding the land, and suffocating wetlands and rivers with sediments. This disturbance is causing water to rush to the sea, carrying away homes and reshaping landscapes. Furthermore, freshwater warmed by the land is spilling out over the salty sea, giving the ocean more energy. This has led to an alarming increase in hurricane ferocity. Hurricanes that pass over open seas have been observed to strengthen from category 4 to 5 in just 24 hours, a fourfold increase in destructive power.

Increased greenhouse gases retain more heat, tipping the planetary heat exchange balance by an additional 1% (3 Watts per meter square). Like the doctor using a thermometer to measure a patient’s temperature, we measure degrees of climate change in parts per million atmospheric carbon dioxides.  Seeing the planetary fever rise, we slow the rise by pushing for net zero carbon emissions.

Feel The Grass Between Your Toes

In addition, expanding our efforts to address better water cycles, water vapor, and cloud cover will have immediate benefits to restoring the balance. To restore Earth’s health, we must address the splotches, rashes, and scars on the land and the bloating by hot surface waters on the sea.

Let’s roll up our sleeves this Earth Day and start in yards and neighborhoods with residential lawns. Natural grasses are the champions of restoration because they push out the highest proportion of carbohydrates; 50% of what is manufactured through photosynthesis uses the carbon dioxide pulled out of the air.  Grasslands co-evolved with hoofed animals that walk on their toenails to break up tough plant fibers. If not stomped, chewed, or cut, plants left fallow on top of the ground rot and gas out carbon dioxide.  By mowing our lawns, plant fibers are returned to the soil by springtails cutting, worms swallowing, and microbes, fungi, and bacteria digesting.

However, applying fertilizer to an established lawn disrupts this carbon nutrient cycle. It kills beneficial microbes and nematodes, destroying the living ecosystems we call soil. Without the manufactured nutrients and chemicals, roots can go deep and open the soil for oxygen, water, and life. A supportive network of fungi and bacteria spreads beneath the turf. Bacteria prepare nutrients and enzymes requested by the plants. The fungal mycorrhizal “wood wide web” connects plants to bacteria.

A natural lawn can build an inch of soil per year.  Sticky carbohydrates hold minerals far apart. So much so that four inches of soil can hold seven inches of rain. Soils with more carbon are deeper to protect homes from extreme weather events. It’s been found that retaining water in our landscapes could potentially reduce sea level rise by 25%. Increasing soil depth benefits everyone, and healthy plants pull down more carbon dioxide to further reduce greenhouse gases.

Look To The Trees

Let’s take a walk into the role of forests to see climate moderation. Picture an 80-year-old forest. Majestic, isn’t it? Now, you might be surprised to learn that this mature forest holds more than double the volume of carbon and water than a forest half its age. When the heat of the day rises, plants in these forests release water vapor, which evaporates and cools the surrounding air. Conversely, during the coldest hour before dawn, these same plants release water vapor that condenses into morning dew, simultaneously releasing heat.

Our old-growth forests are also the source of large volumes of bacteria and fungi that drift through the air. This organic matter serves as nucleation sites for water vapor to form cumulus clouds. These fluffy white clouds play a vital role in reflecting the Sun’s energy back into space, cooling our planet.

However, we’ve tipped the balance and seen a decline in cumulus cloud cover due to deforestation. Less than 50% of the Earth is now covered by these cool clouds. But the story doesn’t end with the plants and forests. The water vapor released by plants also plays a part in moderating climates. When this vapor condenses into mist, an exothermic reaction occurs and results in a drop in air pressure. This drop acts as a biotic pump, pulling moist air from elsewhere. As this moisture moves away from the ocean, its energy decreases. It’s a simple equation: where forests stand, energy is drawn away from the ocean, and the fury of seas will be reduced.

Become Part Of Life’s Web

Our ecosystems, both on land and in the sea, are intricately interconnected and cycle carbon, nitrogen, and water. Small changes can lead to significant effects. For instance, reducing the use of poisons in our yards will slow the loss of phytoplankton in the sea, providing more food for migrating whales.

The difference between today’s carbon dioxide levels (420 ppm) and a more optimal level (350 ppm) is equivalent to 100 billion tons. Removing that much carbon might sound like a monumental task. However, the world’s soil holds 2800 billion tons of carbon, and all the world’s plants and animals hold 564 billion tons of carbon. An increase of just 4% in vegetation and water-retaining healthy soil would be sufficient to offset this difference and restore the balance.

So, as we celebrate Earth Day, let’s remember the crucial role that our forests, plants, and soil play in climate moderation. By halting deforestation and promoting the growth of vegetation and healthy soils, we can help restore the health of our planet. For this Earth Day, let’s reconsider the traditional perspective on climate change and look at the whole picture by expanding the narrative for the sake of our Earth

About The Author

Dr. Rob Moir is a nationally-recognized and award-winning environmentalist. He is president and executive director of Cambridge, MA-based Ocean River Institute, a nonprofit providing expertise, services, resources, and information unavailable on a localized level to support the efforts of environmental organizations. Please visit www.oceanriver.org for more information.

“Strong income reductions are projected for the majority of regions, including North America and Europe, with South Asia and Africa being most strongly affected. These are caused by the impact of climate change on various aspects that are relevant for economic growth such as agricultural yields, labour productivity or infrastructure,” says PIK scientist and first author of the study Maximilian Kotz. Overall, global annual damages are estimated to be at 38 trillion dollars, with a likely range of 19-59 trillion dollars in 2050. These damages mainly result from rising temperatures but also from changes in rainfall and temperature variability. Accounting for other weather extremes such as storms or wildfires could further raise them.

Huge economic costs also for the United States and European Union

“Our analysis shows that climate change will cause massive economic damages within the next 25 years in almost all countries around the world, also in highly-developed ones such as Germany, France and the United States,” says PIK scientist Leonie Wenz who led the study. “These near-term damages are a result of our past emissions. We will need more adaptation efforts if we want to avoid at least some of them. And we have to cut down our emissions drastically and immediately — if not, economic losses will become even bigger in the second half of the century, amounting to up to 60% on global average by 2100. This clearly shows that protecting our climate is much cheaper than not doing so, and that is without even considering non-economic impacts such as loss of life or biodiversity.”

To date, global projections of economic damages caused by climate change typically focus on national impacts from average annual temperatures over long-time horizons. By including the latest empirical findings from climate impacts on economic growth in more than 1,600 subnational regions worldwide over the past 40 years and by focusing on the next 26 years, the researchers were able to project sub-national damages from temperature and rainfall changes in great detail across time and space all the while reducing the large uncertainties associated with long-term projections. The scientists combined empirical models with state-of-the-art climate simulations (CMIP-6). Importantly, they also assessed how persistently climate impacts have affected the economy in the past and took this into account as well.

Countries least responsible will suffer most

“Our study highlights the considerable inequity of climate impacts: We find damages almost everywhere, but countries in the tropics will suffer the most because they are already warmer. Further temperature increases will therefore be most harmful there. The countries least responsible for climate change, are predicted to suffer income loss that is 60% greater than the higher-income countries and 40% greater than higher-emission countries. They are also the ones with the least resources to adapt to its impacts. It is on us to decide: structural change towards a renewable energy system is needed for our security and will save us money. Staying on the path we are currently on, will lead to catastrophic consequences. The temperature of the planet can only be stabilized if we stop burning oil, gas and coal,” says Anders Levermann, Head of Research Department Complexity Science at the Potsdam Institute and co-author of the study.

Revealing the additional damage of global warming

The investigative study revealed a global GDP loss of up to 10 percent if the planet warms by +3ºC. Importantly, accounting for variability and extremes increases the costs of climate change around the world. “If we take into account that warmer years also come with changes in rainfall and temperature variability, it turns out that the estimated impact of spiking temperatures is worse than previously thought,” explains doctoral researcher and economist Paul Waidelich. “Therefore, omitting variability and extremes risks underestimating the damage of temperature changes.”

The cost of climate inaction

Stringent climate action is critical to future economic growth. Limiting global warming to 1.5ºC instead of 3ºC can reduce global losses from climate change by two thirds. “Our results show that the cost of climate inaction is substantial,” stresses ETH Zurich professor, Sonia Seneviratne, a co-author of the study and a Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Working Group I. “Some people still say that the world cannot afford rapid decarbonization, but the global economy will also suffer from the impacts of climate change.”

Global warming of 3ºC also increases the risk of extreme rainfall worldwide, which reduces global GDP, on average, by 0.2 percent — which, at the current size of the global economy, would equal US$ 200 billion. Much of these costs occur in the US and in China, which, unlike warmer tropical regions, are less used to extreme rainfall. However, among the extreme events considered, heatwaves are the most impactful. The study suggests that nearly half of the global economic damage at 3ºC of global warming may be related to extreme heat. Fulden Batibeniz, a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich and the University of Bern explains, “Higher temperatures may seem beneficial for colder countries like Canada, but as we saw in 2021, they also bring much more severe heatwaves, which harm the economy.”

Socio-economic and climatic uncertainties

However, projecting the impacts of climate variability and extremes is complex, and substantial uncertainties remain. When answering the question, “How much will climate change cost?” The research team concedes that uncertainties are primarily socio-economic: how long the impacts persist and how well can society adapt. Yet, how rainfall and climate extremes will evolve need to be better understood. Since the study does not include non-economic impacts, droughts, sea-level rise, and climate tipping points, the authors argue that the total cost of climate change is likely considerably higher.

According to a research team led by palaeontologists from the University of Vienna, the net-like leaf veining typical for today’s flowering plants developed much earlier than previously thought, but died out again several times. Using new methods, the fossilised plant Furcula granulifer was identified as such an early forerunner. The leaves of this seed fern species already exhibited the net-like veining in the late Triassic (around 201 million years ago). The study was recently published in the journal New Phytologist.

Mario Coiro and Leyla Seyfullah of the Department of Palaeontology at the University of Vienna, in collaborations with colleagues from the National Museum of Natural History in Stockholm and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem have investigated an almost 100 year old mystery that illuminates the origin of the most successful group of plants on Earth. “Looking within old collections with novel methods and concepts, we were able to identify a plant from the Late Triassic period that showed an unique set of leaf characters, as member of a much larger group that evolved similar traits with flowering plants without experiencing the same evolutionary success,” explains palaeobotanist Mario Coiro.

“Although the 201 million year old fossil leaves of Furcula granulifer show the net-like hierarchical veining of leaves typical for most plants today, we found out that it is actually part of the now extinct group of seed ferns, so it seems that this typical leaf-form that allows efficient photosynthesis, has evolved several times during earth history,” confirms Leyla Seyfullah, head of the research group “Palaeobotany and terrestrial palaeoecology” at the University of Vienna.

Plant revolution driven by leave evolution

Flowering plants, more specifically known as angiosperms, are the most important group of plants on Earth today, dominating most of the terrestrial ecosystems and being indispensable for human survival. Their appearance during the Cretaceous (145 — 66 Million years ago) revolutionized terrestrial biodiversity, leading to the radiation of other groups such as mammals, insects, and birds, and leading to an increase of overall diversity on Earth.

This Angiosperm Terrestrial Revolution was in part driven by a unique innovation in angiosperm leaves: these present a netted hierarchical venation, which allows angiosperm to fix carbon dioxide in a much more efficient way. “Among the few other fossil plants having similar venation to angiosperms, the fossil leaf Furcula granulifer from the Late Triassic of Greenland bears such striking similarities that it was originally described as an angiosperm leaf, predating the oldest record of the group by more than 50 Million years,” says Coiro. Although this claim was not widely supported by the scientific community, the real affinities of Furcula were not reinvestigated for almost 100 years.

Seeing with new eyes

Based on both historical material and newly investigated material, the team re-evaluated the affinities of Furcula based on both micromorphology and the anatomy of the impermeable coating surrounding leaves (the cuticle). By combining traditional microscopy and novel methods (Confocal Laser Scanning Miscroscopy), they suggest that Furcula was a relative of an extinct group of seed plants with fern-like leaves (“seed ferns”), the Peltaspermales, and that its angiosperm-like venation is a result of convergent evolution. Moreover, unlike angiosperms, the leaves of Furcula did not reach high densities of veins, and thus were not as efficient as angiosperm leaves in fixing carbon.

Failed experiments during the Triassic and Permian

The authors suggest that Furcula represented a failed attempt during the Late Triassic at convergence towards the efficient leaves that angiosperm will later evolve in the Cretaceous, since Furcula and its relatives went extinct probably during the Jurassic without reaching even a fraction of the angiosperm diversity.

The authors also identified another group of mysterious seed plants, the Gigantopteridales, as another failed attempt during the Permian period (approx. 300 million — 250 million years ago). “Through these natural experiments we have the opportunity to understand the true reason of the flowering plant success, which probably lie in the evolution of multiple traits rather than a single key innovation,” explains Seyfullah from the University of Vienna.