It’s hot. It’s toxic. It spins backwards and is covered in volcanoes. And we’re headed there soon. Three Venus missions, recently announced by NASA and the European Space Agency, are going to reveal more than we’ve ever known about the scorcher of a planet, a place that many scientists describe as Earth’s evil twin.
In recent weeks, NASA green-lit two Venus missions, VERITAS and DAVINCI+, while the ESA announced a Venus orbiter called EnVision. Already, planetary scientists are exhilarated by the possibilities. We spoke with several experts about why Venus is so exciting.
“It’s only beginning to hit me what this means,” said Paul Byrne, a planetary scientist at North Carolina State University, in a video call. “I’m gonna lose my shit every time a new paper comes out of it.” Fundamentally, he said, the reason for our return to Venus comes down to understanding why the planet “is our sibling and not our twin.”
“How is it that you have a planet that is almost the same size as Earth, made of presumably about the same stuff, in about the same compositions, orbiting the same star, and that has the same age—how do you have two worlds that are on paper the same, that are yet so vastly different?” Byrne explained. “EnVision, VERITAS, and DAVINCI+ are going to provide an unbelievable and unexpectedly solid foundation for how we tackle this question.”
Federal meteorologists and climate experts say the potential for another devastating wildfire season is higher than normal for much of the western United States, where a brutal heat wave shattered temperature records across multiple states this week.
Nearly 90 percent of the West is experiencing drought, increasing the amount of “fuel” for fires, such as dead trees and brush that is drying out up to a month ahead of schedule in many places, according to the latest climate update from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The past spring has been the warmest on record and the driest since 2006 in the lower 48 states.
Drought conditions have only intensified during the latest heat wave. More than 40 million people experienced triple-digit temperatures this week, straining power grids in Texas and California and prompting officials across the Southwest to warn the public against walking dogs on hot sidewalks and spending time outside during the day.
Get our free emails
Email
Wildfires are already burning across multiple states, including a massive 21,000-acre blaze in Montana, according to the U.S. Forest Service and news reports. With the start of summer right around the corner, the National Interagency Fire Center reported five new large fires on Thursday, bringing the current total to 33 fires burning across more than 400,000 acres in 10 western states.
Wildfires occur naturally and play an important role in certain ecosystems, especially in the West. However, climate change and the disruption of natural areas caused by human pollution and development have created conditions for widespread and devastatingly intense wildfires. A landmark 2016 study found that human-caused climate change is responsible for 55 percent of the increase in dryness that creates fuel for wildfires, more than doubling the amount of land burned across the western U.S. over the past three decades.
Last year, record-breaking summer temperatures, the fourth-highest level of drought on record and an unusual amount of dry lightning combined to create an “apocalyptic” fire season that saw 10.27 million acres of land burned, the most ever recorded, according to Yale Climate Connections. Millions of people in California, Oregon and Washington were forced to evacuate from cities large and small as huge wildfires raced across the landscape and sent enough smoke into the air to change atmospheric conditions across the nation.
Gina Palma, a fire meteorologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said scientists are currently observing drought conditions that they would not normally see not in June, especially in the foothills of mountains and higher elevations across the West, increasing the likelihood of fires. Still, every fire needs a spark, and it remains to be seen whether lightening or fires started by people, for example, will spark the tinder available in brushy areas and dry forests and cause another intense wildfire season.
While there are a number of factors behind these tinderbox conditions, human-caused climate change is certainly one of them.
“We do expect in a warmer world to see more frequent and more intense wildfires, and also heat waves,” Palma told reporters on Thursday.
There is some good news: NOAA forecasters predict monsoon rains that were largely absent in recent years will return to New Mexico and Arizona later in the summer, relieving drought conditions and reducing the potential for significant wildfire outbreaks to normal levels. Palma said widespread drought has also prevented grass from growing that could dry out later in the summer and provide fuel for potential fires.
The potential for fire across most of Texas and the Midwest is expected to be normal or below normal this summer, although scientists warn that “normal” summer conditions could soon be a thing of the past as climate change threatens to become irreversible absent a widespread reduction in fossil fuel pollution.
According to NOAA, it’s still highly likely that many of the same areas across California, Utah, Oregon, Idaho, Washington and western Montana that suffered destructive and even deadly wildfires last year will see significant wildfire activity this summer.
President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, shown here on Jan. 20, 2021, attend Mass at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle during Inauguration Day ceremonies in Washington, D.C.Evan Vucci/AP
After a contentious debate, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has voted to move forward with a process that could call into question the eligibility of politicians like President Joe Biden to receive Communion.
The bishops voted 168-55 in favor of drafting “a formal statement on the meaning of the Eucharist in the life of the Church,” officials announced on Friday afternoon, the final day of their three-day virtual meeting. Six bishops abstained.
Biden’s election as only the nation’s second Roman Catholic president has prompted renewed debate overdenying communionto Catholic politicians whosupport abortion rights, a position at odds with church…
The amount of heat trapped by Earth’s land, ocean, and atmosphere doubled over the course of just 14 years, a new study shows.
To figure out how much heat the earth was trapping, researchers looked at NASA satellite measurements that tracked how much of the Sun’s energy was entering Earth’s atmosphere and how much was being bounced back into space. They compared this with data from NOAA buoys that tracked ocean temperatures — which gives them an idea of how much heat is getting absorbed into the ocean.
The difference between the amount of heat absorbed by Earth, and the amount reflected back into space…
HIGH COUNTRY — On June 11, the organization Help Asheville Bears confirmed a 30th bear in Western North Carolina with a missing leg. Since 2019, Help Asheville Bears has identified, documented and observed bears in the…
IRIS SAMUELS,Associated Press/Report for AmericaJune 17, 2021Updated: June 17, 2021 5:05p.m.Comments
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A commission governing wolf hunting in Montana is considering new wolf management rules that would make it easier to hunt wolves in the state after the Legislature passed several laws earlier this year to encourage additional wolf hunting.
The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks already expects the number of wolves in the state to decrease from around 1,150 to between 900 and 950 wolves following a particularly successful hunting season. Over 320 wolves were harvested during the 2020 hunting season — significantly more than the preceding eight-year average of 242 wolves per year, according to a report released by the department this week.
Still, the department believes the state’s wolf population can support increased wolf hunting without leading to adverse biological effects, according to the report.
Five months ago today, a mother and father tragically lost their son, brothers lost a brother, family members and friends lost a cherished loved one and a community lost one of their own.
On Saturday, January 16, 2021, 20-year-old Jared Sykes, a resident of Dardanelle, and his two cousins went out to Carden Bottoms to go night hunting for coyotes. Around midnight, Sunday, (January 17, 2021) they parked the truck they were in and set up in the corner of a field with two guns with thermal scopes and a coyote call.
About 360 yards away, four men were spending the night in a cabin/farm shed to go duck hunting the next morning. The four men claimed that they heard coyote noises and went outside. One of the men, Scott Douthit, 24 of Russellville, took an AR-15 that was equipped with a thermal scope outside with him. Douthit allegedly…
Wildfire concerns are increasing as the combination of high heat and low humidity produces flammable conditions ripe for rapid fire ignition and spread.TAP TO UNMUTE
June 17, 2021, 8:35 AM PDT/UpdatedJune 17, 2021, 6:39 PM PDTByKathryn ProcivandJeremy Lewan
Historical records continue to be rewritten asextreme heat in the Westthreatens 40 million Americans on Thursday.
An unseasonably hot air mass has spurred highs to rise into the 90s and triple digits across much of the West this entire week, already smashing records in Wyoming, Utah, Arizona and Southern California.
Death Valley, already the holder of the hottest record on Earth with a reading of 134 degrees in 1913, established a new daily record of 125 Wednesday.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, Denver had rare back-to-back 100 degree days, which has only happened 14 times on record. And this week was the earliest in the year it has done…
Scientists have long worried about a coronavirus variant that’s more dangerous than the original virus in three key ways: It would be more transmissible, result in more serious illness, and evade protection from existing vaccines.
“The nightmare here is a variant that checks off all three boxes,” said Bob Wachter, the chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of…
Business June 17, 2021 Protestors call for action on factory farm fires. Photo: Alfons Spoler via Wikimedia Commons Animal rights organisations have again renewed their call for better fire safety on factory farms after two fires this month led to the death of thousands of animals. On Tuesday, 220 calves died in a fire in a factory farm in Elspeet, and last week, 4,600 pigs were killed in a fire in Nederweert in Limburg. ‘We have been saying for years that the measures taken are far too minimal,’ Animal Rights spokeswoman Kristel Grond told Nu.nl. ‘We can talk about fire alarms and sprinklers, but they are just quick fixes. The only real solution is the end of the livestock industry, and closing mega barns is the first step.’ Animal rights lobby group Wakker Dier, which campaigns against cheap meat, says farmers are reluctant to spend on safety because they want to supply meat to supermarkets at bargain prices. ‘The sad thing is that farm minister Carola Schouten is going along with this,’ spokesman Kenny Oostrik said. ‘She says some measures should be taken, but that they are too expensive.’ Wakker Dier says the law needs to be tightened up to force farmers to comply with better safety standards. In particular farmers should be required to install flame resistant walls, fire hydrants and fire alarms, the lobby group says. Eight fires So far this year there have been eight reported barn fires in the Netherlands according to the Wakker Dier monitor. In 2018, the government said it would not force farmers to take further measures to prevent fires breaking out because of the cost of the investment. The current measures do not include compulsory lightning conductors and sprinkler systems. In March, the Dutch safety board OVV said that the Dutch government is not doing enough to reduce the number of barn fires, and that the government considers the death of 130,000 chickens to be an ‘acceptable risk’.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/69472126/1233519628.0.jpg)
