Marine mammal rescue organizations have been swamped with reports of sick and dead sea lions and dolphins along the Southern California coast this month, and experts believe a bloom of harmful algae is to blame.
Hundreds of sea lions are believed to have died in the first weeks of June, according to astatementby the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service, known as NOAA Fisheries.
The number of dead dolphins has reached about 100, according to Michelle Berman Kowalewski, founder and director of the Channel Islands Cetacean Research Unit, a Santa Barbara-based biosurveillance organization.
This image provided by Channel Islands Marine and Wildlife Institute, shows dead and injured marine mammals ashore on a beach in Santa Barbara County, Calif., on Tuesday, June 20th, 2023./ AP
Tissue samples have been collected for tests to confirm the animals are victims ofdomoic acid, a neurotoxin produced…
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (FOX 9)-It has felt a lot like summer for a few weeks now, but it officially kicks off at 9:57 Wednesday morning.The warmth here in Minnesota though pales in comparison to other parts of the world as earth is experiencing a spike in temperatures over the last few months.
While we are in the midst of a stretch of 90s, other parts of the world are much hotter.After big heat waves earlier this spring that have taken thousands of lives from Southeast Asia to India to parts of Africa, the Southern United States and Mexico are now one of the hottest parts of the planet when compared to average.
A heat dome over parts of the Southern United States.
Following the loss of the pheasant flock at its Reynolds Game Farm in March due to bird flu, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has announced the Fall pheasant season will proceed as planned.
The DEC says it is acquiring birds from a commercial hatchery to supplement upland bird hunting in New York . The Department releases 30,000 pheasants on public land each year as the state doesn’t have enough sufficient habitat to support self-sustaining wild pheasants.
The birds will head to Reynolds Game Farm until they are ready to be released across the state.
“Pheasant hunting serves as an introduction to hunting for many New York hunters,” said DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos. “DEC was devastated by the loss of the State’s breeder flock…
Now, researchers report observations of the same Hunga eruption in Tonga producing a lofty volcanic thunderstorm that produced the most intense lightning ever recorded. At its peak, the sprawling storm created 2,615 flashes per minute, smashing the previous record of 993 flashes.
“This series of events on Jan. 15 led to an extreme version of volcanic lightning that…
Perhaps it’s a side effect of our unprecedentedwealth, leisure, and comfort. Perhaps it’s the result of so many broken social promises, our imperial misadventures, or the general coarsening of our national spirit and discourse. Whatever the cause, something is wrong. You can see it in how we speak to one another. You can see it in how we react to national and local crises. From the very top to the bottom, we…
Warming Pacific Ocean waters periodically unleash extreme weather around the globe, and climate change may make it worse. Here’s everything you need to know:
What is El Niño?
It’s a natural, cyclical warming of Pacific Ocean waters that makes global weather more extreme. The phenomenon was named back in the 1600s, when Peruvian fishermen noticed that waters sometimes warmed around Christmastime in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, affecting their catch and the weather. They named the phenomenon El Niño — “The Boy” — after the infant Jesus. The effects of an El Niño vary throughout the world: Some regions experience severe drought and wildfires, while others get massive downpours and flooding. The last full El Niño ended in 2016 — the hottest year on record. A new one was detected this month forming in the Pacific, and some meteorologists warn that this could be a “Super El Niño,” dramatically raising global temperatures for a year or more.
Why would this one be stronger?
Global ocean temperatures already have smashed records in four of the past five years. The WMO predicts a 66% chance that this El Niño will temporarily raise global temperatures by roughly 0.7 degrees on top of previous warming of about 2 degrees, sending atmospheric temperatures zooming past the 2.7-degree Fahrenheit (1.5-degree Celsius) threshold established by the Paris climate agreement as a tipping point for more severe consequences. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is predicting that there is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the next five years, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the warmest on record. “We’re in unprecedented territory,” said Michelle L’Heureux, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center.
How does an El Niño form?
Related video: El Niño has fully loaded, what it means for Canada’s summer (The Weather Network)
but tend not to lock in temperatures when they’re warm.
Loaded: 100.00%Play
Current Time 0:22
/
Duration 1:09QualitySettingsCaptionsFullscreen
The Weather Network
El Niño has fully loaded, what it means for Canada’s summerUnmute
In the Eastern Pacific, near the equator, trade winds usually flow from east to west, pushing warm surface water toward Australia and Asia and letting cooler water rise to the surface near the Americas. For reasons scientists don’t fully understand, during an El Niño period, those winds tend to die down or reverse, allowing the warm surface water to flow eastward and preventing cold water from rising. The moisture of the warm water evaporates into the atmosphere, causing the global temperature to rise, currents to shift, and local weather systems to depart from their usual patterns. Forecasters generally wait until sea surface temperatures rise 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit for at least three months before declaring an El Niño’s arrival, which usually occurs every two to seven years.
What happens then?
El Niño usually strikes first in the Southern Hemisphere from July to September (their winter). North America then experiences the impact from December through January. In the southeastern third of the U.S., that often means downpours, flooding, and landslides. But areas further north in the Americas tend to see warmer, drier conditions, which create prime conditions for wildfires such as the 400-plus blazes now burning across Canada. The 1997-98 El Niño caused an estimated 23,000 deaths. El Niño-fueled fires in Southeast Asia alone contributed to as many as 100,000 deaths in 2015 and 2016. Dartmouth researchers recently estimated that each El Niño saps an average of $3.4 trillion from the global economy, destroying crops and preventing the flow of goods and services.
What can we expect from this El Niño?
Scientists can only guess, because it arrives to a changed world. We’ve just seen the end of an abnormally long La Niña — a countervailing phenomenon in which strong Pacific trade winds periodically increase the upwelling of cold, deep water, producing many of the opposite effects of an El Niño. That La Niña began in 2020 and lasted for most of the past three years before ending in March — but its normal cooling effect did not materialize. Instead, ocean temperatures continued rising, and 2020, 2021 and 2022 remained hotter than any El Niño year before 2015. Though the U.S. is usually given a reprieve from strong, frequent Atlantic and Caribbean hurricanes during El Niños, that’s not expected to be the case this time.
Why not?
The world’s oceans have absorbed more than 90% of the warmth generated by fossil fuels. As a result, North Atlantic temperatures — which reached nearly 73 degrees this month — are now higher than at “any day in recorded history,” according to UCLA climatologist Daniel Swain. The Pacific also appears to be warming in a lasting way. Warm waters make for frequent and powerful hurricanes and cyclones, and forecasters expect an above-average season this year. Marine heat waves also speed up the melting of ice sheets and kill off fish stocks and wildlife. The severe warming of the 2015-16 El Niño destroyed nearly a third of the coral in the Great Barrier Reef. A recent Australian study suggests El Niño/La Niña temperature shocks have grown 10% more extreme since 1960. The double whammy of this El Niño on top of climate change, scientists warn, could trigger weather extremes and disasters of unprecedented scope and scale. “There’s a huge amount of heat stored below the surface that’s ready to erupt,” said NOAA senior scientist Michael McPhaden. “The escalator is only going up.”
Peru as ground zero
The cyclical pattern of current and weather changes Peruvian fisherman named El Niño actually dates back thousands of years, at least to the last Ice Age, geological research has determined. The phenomenon may have even played a role in the collapse of ancient civilizations such as the Inca. Every region in the world is affected differently by El Niños; for Peru, they usually bring a major increase in rainfall and storms. Over recent decades, the country has been severely battered during El Niño, with whole villages sliding off sodden mountainsides. In 2017, heavy rain and flooding displaced some 300,000 Peruvians. And this year’s El Niño is already being blamed for downpours and a consequential outbreak of mosquito-borne dengue fever that has sickened nearly 140,000 people. “The increase in temperature is going to continue, and diseases like dengue are one of the results,” said Dr. Luis Pampa of Peru’s National Health Institute. “We don’t have to be fortune tellers to say that, if we do not not take this problem seriously, it could get worse.”
BY DANIELLA SEGURA JUNE 20, 2023 2:53 PM A tiny critter, which hasn’t been documented in Santa Clara County since 1947, has been found in the California mountains. Photo from Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District A tiny critter, which hasn’t been seen in a California county in decades, has been found in the mountains. After setting up trail cameras in the Sierra Azul Preserve, Ken Hickman captured images of the “elusive” Santa Cruz kangaroo rat in 2019, The Santa Cruz Sun Sentinel reported. Hickman, an idependent researcher, built trail cameras and, with a permit, placed them around the preserve. “I was shocked when I found these animals. It was unbelievable,” Hickman, who had identified the preserve as a potential habitat, told the news outlet. “People have been looking for them for years.” TOP VIDEOS Top Videos 01:05 01:30 Fort Mill high schools holdgraduation ceremonies The species, which hasn’t been documented in Santa Clara County since 1947, is listed as a “critically imperiled subspecies,” meaning the animal is at high risk of extinction, according to the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District. Photos of Hickman’s discovery left Matt Sharp Chaney, a wildlife biologist with Midpen, “awestruck,” Sharp Chaney told NBC Bay Area in a video posted on the agency’s YouTube. From there, “it took a lot of work and a lot of diligence to find” the rodents, he told the outlet. “It wasn’t an instant success story,” Sharp Chaney told the outlet. After trekking through the preserve last year, researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz and Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District found several Santa Cruz kangaroo rats, the agency said in a June 12 Facebook post. Get unlimited digital access Try 1 month for $1 CLAIM OFFER The animals are “neither a kangaroo nor a rat” but are instead “more closely related to chipmunks,” according to the agency. “Although small in stature, kangaroo rats are considered a ‘keystone’ species, meaning its activities have great influence on the plants and animals that make up its habitat,” the agency said. Biologist Matt Sharp Chaney holds a Santa Cruz Kangaroo rat. Photo from Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District The species is only known to live in one other area, the Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, according to the agency. To help support the rodents’ population, the agency said it is helping ongoing genetic research being conducted with a “collaborative team,” which includes researchers from UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz and California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. The agency said it plans to use the results from the study to potentially get the rodent protection under the California Endangered Species Act. In addition to genetic research, the agency said it is creating a “habitat and population management plan,” meant to find improvements for the species’s habitat to help support the animal’s population. Sierra Azul Preserve is about 20 miles northeast of Santa Cruz.
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, protecting endangered species is important because all living beings, including people, depend on other species for survival.
Outforia— an online resource for outdoor recreation that aims to “empower people to connect with nature” with “trusted” reviews, “best local guides and leading regional knowledge” — revealed the state rankings for most endangered species on recordin anew report, which was based on data from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FSW).
The impact of human activity on the Earth system could result in unpredictable chaos from which there is no return, physicists have calculated.
Using a theory conceived to modelsuperconductivity, a team of physicists led by Alex Bernadini of the University of Porto in Portugal showed that, after a certain point, we will not be able to restore equilibrium to Earth’s climate.
A finite amount of human activity could result in a Hothouse Earth from which there is no return. They detailed their work in apaper made available in April 2022on the preprint server arXiv that remains to be peer-reviewed.
“The implications ofclimate changeare well known (droughts, heat waves, extreme phenomena, etc.),” physicist Orfeu Bertolamitold Live Sciencelast year.
“If the Earth System gets into the region of chaotic behavior, we will lose…
Related video: El Niño has fully loaded, what it means for Canada’s summer (The Weather Network)
The Weather Network
(buradaki/Getty Images Plus)
Exposing the Big Game 
