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Welcome to Radio Eye's Diary of Science and Nature. Your
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reader's Kelly Taylor. I'll have some stories on the topics
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of science and nature, but first a reminder that Radio
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Eye is a reading service intended for people who are
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blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult to
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read printed material. We're dealing with a little bit of
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a chest cold today, so excuse me if I cough
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now and then. I'll try to avoid it. Dated August 30th,
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This article from The Atlantic is headlined, This El Nino
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will be unlike any in the past eight decades. Written
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by Joshua Partlow. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean
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along the equator, scientists have drawn a box. It's a
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big box, two-thirds the size of China. Yet, hardly anyone
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lives inside it. This rectangular swath of open ocean is
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monitored by satellites and a network of moored buoys that
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measure minute changes in the temperature of the water with
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an eye toward anomalies. Every few years or so, driven
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by changing winds and currents, the water temperature in this
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part of the ocean starts to rise. Even a half
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degree Celsius above normal over months warrants a designation that
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an El Nino phase has begun. That's enough warming to
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unleash floods and fires, drought and famine around the world.
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The box is called Nino 3.4. Right now, it's hot
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in the box. Quote, like a baby pool, says Christina Teichin,
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who spent most of August scuba diving in the middle
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of this mass of abnormally warm water. Teichin has been
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coming to the world's largest atoll, Kiritimati, for more than
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a decade to study its coral reefs. She usually dives
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in a medium-weight wetsuit. This trip, her team needed only
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rash guards. It is still early in this El Nino cycle,
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which is likely to be the strongest ever recorded. But
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the waters around Kiritimati have already been 3 to 4
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degrees Celsius above normal. Tait Jin's time on Kiratamati, and
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it says here in parentheses, pronounced like Christmas, okay? It's
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spelled K-I-R-I-T-I-M-A-T-I, pronounced like Christmas. The time there has allowed
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her to watch in brutal detail what these repeated warm
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water cycles playing out in a steadily warming ocean mean
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for the great tropical coral reefs here, which were once
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near pristine. During her first El Nino in 2015 and 16,
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90% of Christmas's coral reef died. Years of slow, partial
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recovery followed. This month, Teichen and her colleagues, part of
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the Canadian scientist Julia Baum's lab at the University of Victoria,
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discovered that nearly half of the island's remaining corals had
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already bleached. a prelude, if warming persists, to death. When
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Taijin comes back, she may well be swimming over a graveyard.
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Most of the world experiences El Niño' s ripple effects as
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the heat building up in the equatorial Pacific radiates into
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the atmosphere and around the globe. This means great gouts
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of rain and supercharged storms in some places. In other areas,
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crop-killing dry spells that can extend for months. Along the
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Pacific coast of South America, torrential rains and landslides have
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forced the temporary closure of a main route to Machu
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Picchu in Peru. Deadly floods have swept through arid regions
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of northern Chile. Countries such as India and Ethiopia are
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enduring some of their driest summers on record. El Ninos
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tend to mean more rainfall across the southern United States
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and drier stretches across a band in the north. Strong
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El Ninos can mean record-breaking heat, and this one is
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shaping up to be unlike any cataloged in the past
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eight decades. A 2 degrees Celsius increase in the Nino 3.4
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box typically means the title of Super El Nino. We're
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already past that threshold, and experts project that the warming
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could peak at roughly twice as high. Quote, We are
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now pretty certain this will be an exceptional event. says
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Malte Stuecker, the director of the International Pacific Research Center
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at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Part of the
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reason Stuecker expects this warmth to keep building is that
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the buoys along the equator can detect water temperatures well
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below the surface. Down more than 100 meters, an enormous
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mass of warm water has built up and will rise
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to the surface in the months ahead. The amount of
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heat brewing in the ocean has produced one of those
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graphs in which the current year departs drastically from past
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trend lines, wriggling up erratically into unfamiliar territory. Although scientists
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continue to debate the extent to which climate change makes
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El Nino cycles more frequent or intense, they agree that
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these cycles are occurring in an ocean that is warmer
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than it was. Last Saturday, the daily global average sea
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surface temperature reached 21.1 degrees Celsius, or 70 degrees Fahrenheit,
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its highest level on record. Even if El Nino cycles
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are not changing at all as they spiral around that
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ascending baseline, the temperature peaks they hit keep getting higher,
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causing repeated blows to marine life and disrupting ecosystems in
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a way that may be irrevocable. Carlos Zavalaca the director
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of the Seabird Lab at the Universidad Científica de Sur
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in Lima, began to comprehend the magnitude of this year's
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warming in mid-June when he visited Maccabi and Guanape Norte,
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two islands off the northern coast of Peru. He'd been
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hearing from colleagues about dead birds washing up by the
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hundreds on the coasts of Peru and Ecuador. He's seen
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the news stories about flocks of hungry Peruvian pelicans swarming
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the fish markets in port cities, looking for food. On
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the two islands, which just last year were thronged with pelicans,
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Inca terns, and Humboldt penguins, Zavalaca found empty nests, some
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with eggs and starving chicks. They were abandoned islands, he
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told me. These seabirds' feet on schools of anchovies swept
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up in the Humboldt current, the cold, nutrient-rich, upwelling waters
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that create bountiful fisheries off South America's Pacific coast. During
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El Nino years, that current gets displaced by warmer waters
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pushing east across the ocean, and these great schools of
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feeder fish can vanish from the coasts. The decline has
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been severe enough that Peru this month shut down an
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anchovy fishery that is a key economic engine for the country,
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with much of the year's quota unfulfilled. Long before satellite monitoring,
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Peruvian fishermen noticed these cycles of warmer waters and dwindling
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fish stocks. They named the phenomenon, which peaked around Christmas,
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after the Christ child. References to El Niño in Peru's
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scientific literature date back to the 19th century. In his
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three decades studying seabirds, Zavalaga has witnessed die-offs before. but
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it is the rapid-fire nature of these blows and the
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severity of the disruptions that make him so concerned. Just
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three years ago, the same year avian flu killed more
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than 500,000 seabirds, another El Nino slammed into the coast
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of Peru. The birds that had made a tenuous recovery
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since then now face the prospect of another die-off. Zabalaga says, quote,
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It's like a boxing match. You have a first knockout,
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you try to recover quickly, and then you have a
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second knockout. I cannot imagine what will be the scenario
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by the end of this year, end quote. He doubted
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that the birds could go extinct, but some species might
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move farther south in search of colder waters. The coastline
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in Peru and the culture that depends on the fish
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and the birds could be permanently altered. When the warming started,
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Around Christmas, one of the few populated islands in the
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Nino 3.4 monitoring zone, Bill Newton, an island resident, was
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fascinated by how evident the changes were. He told me
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that the normally dry island turned sopping wet and regular
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floods started washing out the roads. The wet brought swarms
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of mosquitoes, but also clouds of dragonflies, which he hadn't
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seen before. Higher than normal tides poured into seafront homes. Tuna,
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which can do well in warmer water, attracted dozens of
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fishing boats off the coast. Prevailing winds changed direction. Corals
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have a particularly hard time when water warms. They can't
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move elsewhere. and they are sensitive to heat stress. As
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little as four weeks in water, just a degree warmer
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than normal, can cause bleaching. The loss of the symbiotic
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algae that supply corals food and brilliant colors, according to Baum,
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whose lab Tijan works at. Baum, an ecologist, has studied
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Christmas' reef since 2009. After the El Nino a decade
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ago killed off nearly the entire reef, Baum began to
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consider the possibility that she would witness the obliteration of
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an ecosystem in her lifetime. In a 2018 paper in Science,
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she projected that successive bleaching events could occur frequently enough
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that coral reefs, which take roughly 10 to 30 years
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to recover from mass mortality, would not have time to regrow.
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In the years since, she had been hopeful that nature
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could fight back as she watched surviving corals take up
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symbionts that were more heat resistant. This year's warming and
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the pace of bleaching already underway have dispelled that hope.
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What happens next is in some ways predictable. El Nino
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is not a haphazard force of destruction. It's a warming
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phase in a specific area in the Pacific Ocean that
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scientists have determined shifts the probabilities for certain weather outcomes
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in various parts of the world. Those probabilities are reliable
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enough that, for example, the U.S. Navy already plans to
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send a hospital ship to the coast of Peru in
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February to be in position to help after expected floods.
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But as Baum and other scientists who study and love
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the delicate ecosystems in the Equatorial Pacific are finding, just
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because El Nino is a familiar cycle doesn't mean things
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will be the same when this one is over. Now
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turning to earth.com, honeybees can warn us when an ecosystem
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is in trouble. Honeybees pick up traces of environmental stress
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as they forage, making their health a potential early warning
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system for ecosystem trouble. A honeybee doesn't know it's collecting data,
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but every trip it makes, dipping into a puddle, landing
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on a flower, or brushing against pollen, it picks up
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a tiny sample of whatever's out there in the environment, pesticides, pollutants,
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and other contaminants present in the landscape. Researchers now argue
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that habit turns bees into something far more useful than
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pollinators alone. It makes them living instruments for reading the
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health of an entire ecosystem. The work was led by
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an international team of scientists from the Sbarro Health Research Organization,
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the local health authority of Foggia, Temple University, the University
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Magna Grazia of Catanzaro, and the University of Siena. The
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review leans on a framework called One Health, an approach
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that treats human health, animal health, and ecosystem health as
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one connected system rather than three separate categories. Bees, as
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it turns out, sit almost exactly where those three categories overlap.
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Pollination supports agricultural production and many of the foods that
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humans eat. When bee populations struggle, the consequences don't stop
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at the hive. They ripple outward into agriculture, food security,
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and eventually into human welfare. A struggling colony isn't just
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bad news for bees. It can be a warning sign
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of something much bigger. Here's where the review pushes back
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against a fairly common assumption, that the harm pesticides do
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to bees should be measured mostly by whether the bees die.
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That's too narrow a lens, the authors argue. Doses far
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too small to kill a bee outright. can still quietly
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rewire its behavior, throw off its navigation, weaken its immune defenses,
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disrupt reproduction, and destabilize the community of microbes living in
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its gut. And these pressures rarely occur in isolation. Pesticides
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layered on top of poor nutrition, disease, or other environmental
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stress can compound their effect. That's exactly what makes bees
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such good sentinels. A colony's overall health reflects the weight
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of everything pressing on it at once, not just one
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chemical measured in isolation. Quote, honeybees can be considered biological
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sentinels of the environment because their health reflects the complex
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interaction between chemical exposure, nutrition, pathogens, and ecological conditions, said
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Antonio Giordano, founder and director of SHRO. quote, their protection
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is therefore not simply a matter of safeguarding a single species.
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It means protecting the ecological systems that sustain agriculture, biodiversity,
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and ultimately human health. What makes this framework generally worth
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paying attention to rather than just a nice way of
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thinking about ecology comes down to timing. The idea is
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that changes in bee health could reveal environmental pressure before
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it develops into broader, ecological, or food system consequences. Quote,
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the concept of bees as sentinels perfectly embodies the One
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Health approach. Monitoring honeybee health can provide an integrated view
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of environmental stress while linking veterinary science, environmental surveillance, agriculture,
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and human health, said Giovanna Liguri, executive director of the
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One Health group. Quote, Bees can become an important early
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warning system for environmental changes, helping us identify biological effects
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before they translate into broader ecological and food system consequences.
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End quote. Well, let's turn now to Smithsonian Magazine. This
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article is headlined, What Triggered the Devastating Floods in Nepal
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and Tibet? And Are We Due for More in the Future?
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Here's what scientists know so far. This is from August 31st.
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On August 26th, devastating flash floods washed away buildings, bridges,
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and other infrastructure near the border between Nepal and China-governed Tibet.
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The natural disaster has killed more than 900 people and
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left nearly 5,000 missing as of August 31st. Quote, It
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was a huge gush of mud coming straight towards us,
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recalls Kishav Prasad Baral, a 68-year-old survivor, to a team
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of reporters. My wife is still somewhere beneath the mud.
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She's gone, end quote. But what caused the catastrophic event
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and could more like it happen in the future? Scientists
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are still putting the pieces together. Here's what they know
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so far. What caused the flooding? According to the U.S.
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Geological Survey's August 27th update, an event in Nepal's Langthorn
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National Park in the Himalayas triggered the flooding. The agency
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says that either a landslide carrying a glacier or a
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glacier collapse in which part of it snaps off may
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have generated the energy equivalent to a magnitude 5.2 earthquake.
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Then debris tumbled downward and triggered the floods. Many scientists
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are heavily leaning toward the landslide explanation. The physics of
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the glacier collapse hypothesis didn't hold up, according to some
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natural hazards researchers in a group analyzing the event. What's more,
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satellite images obtained the evening of August 26th show a
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bald mountain hinting at a giant landslide. Quote, the glacier
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just came along for the ride, says Goran Ekstrom, seismologist
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at Columbia University. However, experts still aren't sure where all
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the water came from. At first, scientists thought that a
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glacial lake had collapsed, but satellite imagery and weather data
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didn't suggest any big ones were forming in the region.
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It's more likely that the rush of ice and sediments
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from the landslide accumulated river water as it barreled downstream,
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according to Kristen Cook, a geomorphologist at Grenoble Alps University
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in France. The USGS says the glacial debris picked up
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rocky material and water as it sped downhill, generating a
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debris flow and flood that traveled around 62 miles. It's
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just a gobsmackingly unbelievable amount of water, says Daniel Shugar,
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geologist at the University of Calgary in Canada. Quote, figuring
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out where that water came from is actually probably the
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hardest thing about all this, end quote. Did climate change
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play a role? While no attribution study has been done yet,
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scientists already know that rising global temperatures caused by human
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activity are destabilizing glaciers in the Himalayas, which contain some
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of the world's tallest slopes. Quote, there's no question that
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this event was made more likely because of climate change
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and that we're seeing more likely other similar glacial hazards occurring,
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says Twyla Moon, glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder.
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Not only are thousands of glaciers losing ice at unprecedented rates,
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the permafrost they sit atop is also thawing. As that
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frozen blend of soil, rocks, and organic material warms, the
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mountains and surrounding ice become less stable. In turn, this, quote,
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can result in massive landslides triggering a number of cascading
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processes that can lead to a massive flood and destruction downstream,
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says Alton Byers, mountain geographer at the University of Colorado Boulder.
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Scientists say events like this are probably going to become
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more common as the world continues to heat up. That's
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why Shashir Kanal, Nepal's Minister for Foreign Affairs, called for
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a global effort to address climate change during an August
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29th press conference. Quote, we request the global community to
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come together and preserve the Himalayan ecosystem, he said. The
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country is one of the world's lowest contributors of planet-warming
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greenhouse gases, but it faces some of the worst impacts
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of climate change. Shugar echoes that sentiment perfectly.
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To PBS News' Jeff Bennett, quote, we need to be
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stepping up to help mitigate these risks and to enhance
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the resiliency of people living in these environments that are
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subject to these disasters.
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When there's a climate change link, we in the rich
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West are largely responsible for it, he says. What comes next?
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Rescue efforts are still underway and it will likely take
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weeks to recover all victims. That includes survivors who are
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stuck atop buildings that rescue teams are struggling to access
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and hundreds of workers who are trapped in hydropower tunnels.
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A months-long cleanup effort will follow and some people may
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never find their loved ones' bodies, which may have even
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been swept to India, reports The Guardian's Hannah Ellis Peterson.
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According to Reuters' Saruba Sharma, Nepali officials estimate that it
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will cost $ 4 to $ 5 billion, or about a tenth
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of the country's economy, to rebuild. Now, National Geographic has
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an article headlined, How Wildfire is Erasing the Forests of
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the American West. It's from August 31st. One summer evening
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in 1996, an abandoned campfire caught the woods of the
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Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico. on fire. The next day,
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the wildfire exploded. The fire trapped 48 firefighters on a
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dirt road, forcing them to deploy their shelters, and flames
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advanced on the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Ultimately, the fire
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consumed an engine and burned the arms of a firefighter
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who lost his gloves, but it did not reach the lab.
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What surprised everyone in the aftermath was the number of
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dead trees. The Dome Fire burned at such an intensity
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across 6,600 acres, some 40% of its total path, that
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it killed swaths of mixed conifers and ponderosa pines that
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had survived centuries of fires. But this fire was hotter
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than the others. People said the trees would come back,
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no big deal, and indeed they started to. Then, in 2000,
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a larger fire, the Cerro Grande, ripped through the scar
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of the dome fire. Then, in 2011, a much larger fire,
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the Lost Conscious, ripped through the scars of both fires.
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Now 30 years have passed since the dome fire, but
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the trees have not come back. Ridgelines of the Jemez Mountains,
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once cloaked in green canopies, are now craggy, barren, and brown.
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An emerging body of research is showing that those early fires,
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once novelties across the West, have become the norm. According
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to a paper published in late June in the Proceedings
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of the National Academy of Sciences, forest-eliminating wildfires are now
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the most common type of fire in California. Research published
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in the past few years suggests much of the West
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is following the same trend. In the last four decades,
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largely because of wildfires, 9% of forests across the West
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have died. While it is too soon to know the
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ecological fallout from the many fires burning this summer across
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the western U.S., research suggests that the damage may leave
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permanent scars. In the coming century, parts of the region
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will lose up to a third of its forests. To
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look for clues to how this will happen, look to
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what's unfolding in the Jamez Mountains, scientists say. And what's
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happening there, they also say, is dire. Before we started
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putting them out in the 1880s, most of the wildfires
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out west were so-called good fires, crawling across the forest
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floor every 2 to 20 years, consuming logs and leaf
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litter and shrubs and grass. Fires maintained ecosystems. Today, they
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are just as likely to kill them. The high-severity fires
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seen more frequently today are the kinds of fires whose
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smoke crosses the continent to dim the sun in New
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York City. They dominate the land after 140 years of
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fire suppression policies and practices have largely banished good fires.
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As the West continues to heat up and dry out,
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the nearly century and a half of backlogged fuel in
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the forests are going up all at once. Quote, basically,
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as long as you have a bunch of fuels, then
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the drier climate is going to give you bigger fires,
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said Park Williams, a geography professor at the University of California,
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Los Angeles. and an author on the recent paper. Quote,
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it's easier to start fires and it's easier to spread fires,
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end quote. The Jemez Mountains are ground zero for this phenomenon.
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According to Andres Huion, the lead author on a paper
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published today explaining how fire is reshaping the mountains. He
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notes that scientists have studied this landscape's fire history more
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than anywhere else in North America. Wyan, a postdoctoral researcher
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at the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute, compares
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the process unfolding in the Jemez to a mouse eating cheese. Ultimately,
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his and his colleagues' research suggests the mouse will likely
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eat the entire wedge. By 2065, Wyand predicts fewer than
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half of the conifer forests of the Jemez will remain.
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By 2115, between 5 and 33% will remain. Quote, we
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will likely not have forests to pass on to our
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next generation if everything keeps burning the way it is
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burning and you just let it burn, he said. The
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forecasts are dire. It's just unsustainable, end quote. Many of
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these wildfires have more in common with bombs than they
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do natural processes. The kind of wildfire that most western
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forests evolved alongside spreads outward, its temperatures spiking highest along
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the leading edge as it consumes new fuel, stopping when
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it runs out of things to burn or is put
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out by rain or the absence of wind. But this
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more severe species of wildfire often sustains itself, feeding on
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fuels stockpiled in the forest By a century of fire exclusion,
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the fire concentrates heat at its center. Getting so hot,
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it sometimes creates its own weather. The pyrocumulonimbus clouds have
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been documented billowing 25,000 feet above these fires. These clouds
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release downdrafts that drive wind along the surface of the fire,
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blowing flames outward and killing everything in its path. Well,
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that's all for today's Diary of Science and Nature, your
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00:28:09.339 --> 00:28:12.970
reader is Kelly Taylor. Now stay tuned for further programming
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on Radio Eye.
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Welcome to Radio Eye's Diary of Science and Nature. Your
2
00:00:04.500 --> 00:00:08.039
reader's Kelly Taylor. I'll have some stories on the topics
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00:00:08.099 --> 00:00:10.740
of science and nature, but first a reminder that Radio
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00:00:10.939 --> 00:00:14.179
Eye is a reading service intended for people who are
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00:00:14.199 --> 00:00:17.300
blind or have other disabilities that make it difficult to
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00:00:17.359 --> 00:00:21.129
read printed material. We're dealing with a little bit of
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00:00:21.190 --> 00:00:24.690
a chest cold today, so excuse me if I cough
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00:00:25.570 --> 00:00:29.870
now and then. I'll try to avoid it. Dated August 30th,
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This article from The Atlantic is headlined, This El Nino
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00:00:37.100 --> 00:00:42.350
will be unlike any in the past eight decades. Written
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00:00:42.390 --> 00:00:46.710
by Joshua Partlow. In the middle of the Pacific Ocean
12
00:00:46.789 --> 00:00:51.270
along the equator, scientists have drawn a box. It's a
13
00:00:51.329 --> 00:00:56.579
big box, two-thirds the size of China. Yet, hardly anyone
14
00:00:56.840 --> 00:01:03.060
lives inside it. This rectangular swath of open ocean is
15
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monitored by satellites and a network of moored buoys that
16
00:01:08.049 --> 00:01:11.730
measure minute changes in the temperature of the water with
17
00:01:11.769 --> 00:01:16.450
an eye toward anomalies. Every few years or so, driven
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00:01:16.489 --> 00:01:19.250
by changing winds and currents, the water temperature in this
19
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part of the ocean starts to rise. Even a half
20
00:01:22.489 --> 00:01:28.109
degree Celsius above normal over months warrants a designation that
21
00:01:28.170 --> 00:01:32.730
an El Nino phase has begun. That's enough warming to
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00:01:32.870 --> 00:01:37.469
unleash floods and fires, drought and famine around the world.
23
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The box is called Nino 3.4. Right now, it's hot
24
00:01:45.579 --> 00:01:52.400
in the box. Quote, like a baby pool, says Christina Teichin,
25
00:01:53.099 --> 00:01:55.859
who spent most of August scuba diving in the middle
26
00:01:55.879 --> 00:02:00.599
of this mass of abnormally warm water. Teichin has been
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00:02:00.640 --> 00:02:05.819
coming to the world's largest atoll, Kiritimati, for more than
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a decade to study its coral reefs. She usually dives
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00:02:09.659 --> 00:02:13.889
in a medium-weight wetsuit. This trip, her team needed only
30
00:02:14.090 --> 00:02:18.449
rash guards. It is still early in this El Nino cycle,
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which is likely to be the strongest ever recorded. But
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the waters around Kiritimati have already been 3 to 4
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degrees Celsius above normal. Tait Jin's time on Kiratamati, and
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it says here in parentheses, pronounced like Christmas, okay? It's
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spelled K-I-R-I-T-I-M-A-T-I, pronounced like Christmas. The time there has allowed
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her to watch in brutal detail what these repeated warm
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water cycles playing out in a steadily warming ocean mean
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for the great tropical coral reefs here, which were once
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near pristine. During her first El Nino in 2015 and 16,
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90% of Christmas's coral reef died. Years of slow, partial
41
00:03:15.879 --> 00:03:20.240
recovery followed. This month, Teichen and her colleagues, part of
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the Canadian scientist Julia Baum's lab at the University of Victoria,
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00:03:25.979 --> 00:03:28.909
discovered that nearly half of the island's remaining corals had
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already bleached. a prelude, if warming persists, to death. When
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Taijin comes back, she may well be swimming over a graveyard.
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Most of the world experiences El Niño' s ripple effects as
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00:03:43.689 --> 00:03:47.550
the heat building up in the equatorial Pacific radiates into
48
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the atmosphere and around the globe. This means great gouts
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00:03:51.759 --> 00:03:56.479
of rain and supercharged storms in some places. In other areas,
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00:03:56.599 --> 00:04:01.069
crop-killing dry spells that can extend for months. Along the
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00:04:01.090 --> 00:04:04.729
Pacific coast of South America, torrential rains and landslides have
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forced the temporary closure of a main route to Machu
53
00:04:08.310 --> 00:04:13.120
Picchu in Peru. Deadly floods have swept through arid regions
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of northern Chile. Countries such as India and Ethiopia are
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enduring some of their driest summers on record. El Ninos
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tend to mean more rainfall across the southern United States
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and drier stretches across a band in the north. Strong
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El Ninos can mean record-breaking heat, and this one is
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shaping up to be unlike any cataloged in the past
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eight decades. A 2 degrees Celsius increase in the Nino 3.4
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box typically means the title of Super El Nino. We're
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already past that threshold, and experts project that the warming
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could peak at roughly twice as high. Quote, We are
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now pretty certain this will be an exceptional event. says
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Malte Stuecker, the director of the International Pacific Research Center
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at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Part of the
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reason Stuecker expects this warmth to keep building is that
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the buoys along the equator can detect water temperatures well
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below the surface. Down more than 100 meters, an enormous
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mass of warm water has built up and will rise
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to the surface in the months ahead. The amount of
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heat brewing in the ocean has produced one of those
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graphs in which the current year departs drastically from past
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trend lines, wriggling up erratically into unfamiliar territory. Although scientists
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continue to debate the extent to which climate change makes
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El Nino cycles more frequent or intense, they agree that
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these cycles are occurring in an ocean that is warmer
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than it was. Last Saturday, the daily global average sea
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surface temperature reached 21.1 degrees Celsius, or 70 degrees Fahrenheit,
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its highest level on record. Even if El Nino cycles
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are not changing at all as they spiral around that
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ascending baseline, the temperature peaks they hit keep getting higher,
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causing repeated blows to marine life and disrupting ecosystems in
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a way that may be irrevocable. Carlos Zavalaca the director
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of the Seabird Lab at the Universidad Científica de Sur
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in Lima, began to comprehend the magnitude of this year's
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warming in mid-June when he visited Maccabi and Guanape Norte,
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two islands off the northern coast of Peru. He'd been
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hearing from colleagues about dead birds washing up by the
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hundreds on the coasts of Peru and Ecuador. He's seen
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the news stories about flocks of hungry Peruvian pelicans swarming
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the fish markets in port cities, looking for food. On
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the two islands, which just last year were thronged with pelicans,
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Inca terns, and Humboldt penguins, Zavalaca found empty nests, some
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with eggs and starving chicks. They were abandoned islands, he
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told me. These seabirds' feet on schools of anchovies swept
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up in the Humboldt current, the cold, nutrient-rich, upwelling waters
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that create bountiful fisheries off South America's Pacific coast. During
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El Nino years, that current gets displaced by warmer waters
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pushing east across the ocean, and these great schools of
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feeder fish can vanish from the coasts. The decline has
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been severe enough that Peru this month shut down an
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anchovy fishery that is a key economic engine for the country,
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with much of the year's quota unfulfilled. Long before satellite monitoring,
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Peruvian fishermen noticed these cycles of warmer waters and dwindling
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fish stocks. They named the phenomenon, which peaked around Christmas,
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after the Christ child. References to El Niño in Peru's
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scientific literature date back to the 19th century. In his
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three decades studying seabirds, Zavalaga has witnessed die-offs before. but
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it is the rapid-fire nature of these blows and the
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severity of the disruptions that make him so concerned. Just
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three years ago, the same year avian flu killed more
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than 500,000 seabirds, another El Nino slammed into the coast
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of Peru. The birds that had made a tenuous recovery
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since then now face the prospect of another die-off. Zabalaga says, quote,
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It's like a boxing match. You have a first knockout,
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you try to recover quickly, and then you have a
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second knockout. I cannot imagine what will be the scenario
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by the end of this year, end quote. He doubted
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that the birds could go extinct, but some species might
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move farther south in search of colder waters. The coastline
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in Peru and the culture that depends on the fish
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and the birds could be permanently altered. When the warming started,
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Around Christmas, one of the few populated islands in the
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Nino 3.4 monitoring zone, Bill Newton, an island resident, was
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fascinated by how evident the changes were. He told me
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that the normally dry island turned sopping wet and regular
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floods started washing out the roads. The wet brought swarms
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of mosquitoes, but also clouds of dragonflies, which he hadn't
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seen before. Higher than normal tides poured into seafront homes. Tuna,
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which can do well in warmer water, attracted dozens of
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fishing boats off the coast. Prevailing winds changed direction. Corals
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have a particularly hard time when water warms. They can't
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move elsewhere. and they are sensitive to heat stress. As
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little as four weeks in water, just a degree warmer
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than normal, can cause bleaching. The loss of the symbiotic
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algae that supply corals food and brilliant colors, according to Baum,
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whose lab Tijan works at. Baum, an ecologist, has studied
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Christmas' reef since 2009. After the El Nino a decade
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ago killed off nearly the entire reef, Baum began to
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consider the possibility that she would witness the obliteration of
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an ecosystem in her lifetime. In a 2018 paper in Science,
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she projected that successive bleaching events could occur frequently enough
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that coral reefs, which take roughly 10 to 30 years
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to recover from mass mortality, would not have time to regrow.
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In the years since, she had been hopeful that nature
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could fight back as she watched surviving corals take up
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symbionts that were more heat resistant. This year's warming and
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the pace of bleaching already underway have dispelled that hope.
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What happens next is in some ways predictable. El Nino
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is not a haphazard force of destruction. It's a warming
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phase in a specific area in the Pacific Ocean that
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scientists have determined shifts the probabilities for certain weather outcomes
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in various parts of the world. Those probabilities are reliable
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enough that, for example, the U.S. Navy already plans to
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send a hospital ship to the coast of Peru in
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February to be in position to help after expected floods.
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But as Baum and other scientists who study and love
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the delicate ecosystems in the Equatorial Pacific are finding, just
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because El Nino is a familiar cycle doesn't mean things
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will be the same when this one is over. Now
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turning to earth.com, honeybees can warn us when an ecosystem
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is in trouble. Honeybees pick up traces of environmental stress
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as they forage, making their health a potential early warning
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system for ecosystem trouble. A honeybee doesn't know it's collecting data,
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but every trip it makes, dipping into a puddle, landing
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on a flower, or brushing against pollen, it picks up
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a tiny sample of whatever's out there in the environment, pesticides, pollutants,
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and other contaminants present in the landscape. Researchers now argue
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that habit turns bees into something far more useful than
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pollinators alone. It makes them living instruments for reading the
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health of an entire ecosystem. The work was led by
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an international team of scientists from the Sbarro Health Research Organization,
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the local health authority of Foggia, Temple University, the University
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Magna Grazia of Catanzaro, and the University of Siena. The
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review leans on a framework called One Health, an approach
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that treats human health, animal health, and ecosystem health as
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one connected system rather than three separate categories. Bees, as
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it turns out, sit almost exactly where those three categories overlap.
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Pollination supports agricultural production and many of the foods that
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humans eat. When bee populations struggle, the consequences don't stop
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at the hive. They ripple outward into agriculture, food security,
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and eventually into human welfare. A struggling colony isn't just
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bad news for bees. It can be a warning sign
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of something much bigger. Here's where the review pushes back
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against a fairly common assumption, that the harm pesticides do
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to bees should be measured mostly by whether the bees die.
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That's too narrow a lens, the authors argue. Doses far
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too small to kill a bee outright. can still quietly
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rewire its behavior, throw off its navigation, weaken its immune defenses,
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disrupt reproduction, and destabilize the community of microbes living in
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its gut. And these pressures rarely occur in isolation. Pesticides
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layered on top of poor nutrition, disease, or other environmental
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stress can compound their effect. That's exactly what makes bees
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such good sentinels. A colony's overall health reflects the weight
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of everything pressing on it at once, not just one
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chemical measured in isolation. Quote, honeybees can be considered biological
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sentinels of the environment because their health reflects the complex
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interaction between chemical exposure, nutrition, pathogens, and ecological conditions, said
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Antonio Giordano, founder and director of SHRO. quote, their protection
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is therefore not simply a matter of safeguarding a single species.
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It means protecting the ecological systems that sustain agriculture, biodiversity,
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and ultimately human health. What makes this framework generally worth
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paying attention to rather than just a nice way of
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thinking about ecology comes down to timing. The idea is
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that changes in bee health could reveal environmental pressure before
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it develops into broader, ecological, or food system consequences. Quote,
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the concept of bees as sentinels perfectly embodies the One
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Health approach. Monitoring honeybee health can provide an integrated view
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of environmental stress while linking veterinary science, environmental surveillance, agriculture,
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and human health, said Giovanna Liguri, executive director of the
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One Health group. Quote, Bees can become an important early
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warning system for environmental changes, helping us identify biological effects
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before they translate into broader ecological and food system consequences.
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End quote. Well, let's turn now to Smithsonian Magazine. This
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article is headlined, What Triggered the Devastating Floods in Nepal
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and Tibet? And Are We Due for More in the Future?
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Here's what scientists know so far. This is from August 31st.
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On August 26th, devastating flash floods washed away buildings, bridges,
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and other infrastructure near the border between Nepal and China-governed Tibet.
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The natural disaster has killed more than 900 people and
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left nearly 5,000 missing as of August 31st. Quote, It
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was a huge gush of mud coming straight towards us,
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recalls Kishav Prasad Baral, a 68-year-old survivor, to a team
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of reporters. My wife is still somewhere beneath the mud.
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She's gone, end quote. But what caused the catastrophic event
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and could more like it happen in the future? Scientists
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are still putting the pieces together. Here's what they know
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so far. What caused the flooding? According to the U.S.
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Geological Survey's August 27th update, an event in Nepal's Langthorn
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National Park in the Himalayas triggered the flooding. The agency
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says that either a landslide carrying a glacier or a
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glacier collapse in which part of it snaps off may
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have generated the energy equivalent to a magnitude 5.2 earthquake.
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Then debris tumbled downward and triggered the floods. Many scientists
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are heavily leaning toward the landslide explanation. The physics of
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the glacier collapse hypothesis didn't hold up, according to some
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natural hazards researchers in a group analyzing the event. What's more,
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satellite images obtained the evening of August 26th show a
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bald mountain hinting at a giant landslide. Quote, the glacier
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just came along for the ride, says Goran Ekstrom, seismologist
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at Columbia University. However, experts still aren't sure where all
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the water came from. At first, scientists thought that a
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glacial lake had collapsed, but satellite imagery and weather data
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didn't suggest any big ones were forming in the region.
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It's more likely that the rush of ice and sediments
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from the landslide accumulated river water as it barreled downstream,
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according to Kristen Cook, a geomorphologist at Grenoble Alps University
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in France. The USGS says the glacial debris picked up
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rocky material and water as it sped downhill, generating a
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debris flow and flood that traveled around 62 miles. It's
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just a gobsmackingly unbelievable amount of water, says Daniel Shugar,
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geologist at the University of Calgary in Canada. Quote, figuring
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out where that water came from is actually probably the
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hardest thing about all this, end quote. Did climate change
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play a role? While no attribution study has been done yet,
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scientists already know that rising global temperatures caused by human
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activity are destabilizing glaciers in the Himalayas, which contain some
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of the world's tallest slopes. Quote, there's no question that
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this event was made more likely because of climate change
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and that we're seeing more likely other similar glacial hazards occurring,
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says Twyla Moon, glaciologist at the University of Colorado Boulder.
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Not only are thousands of glaciers losing ice at unprecedented rates,
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the permafrost they sit atop is also thawing. As that
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frozen blend of soil, rocks, and organic material warms, the
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mountains and surrounding ice become less stable. In turn, this, quote,
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can result in massive landslides triggering a number of cascading
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processes that can lead to a massive flood and destruction downstream,
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says Alton Byers, mountain geographer at the University of Colorado Boulder.
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Scientists say events like this are probably going to become
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more common as the world continues to heat up. That's
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why Shashir Kanal, Nepal's Minister for Foreign Affairs, called for
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a global effort to address climate change during an August
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29th press conference. Quote, we request the global community to
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come together and preserve the Himalayan ecosystem, he said. The
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country is one of the world's lowest contributors of planet-warming
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greenhouse gases, but it faces some of the worst impacts
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of climate change. Shugar echoes that sentiment perfectly.
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To PBS News' Jeff Bennett, quote, we need to be
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stepping up to help mitigate these risks and to enhance
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the resiliency of people living in these environments that are
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subject to these disasters.
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When there's a climate change link, we in the rich
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West are largely responsible for it, he says. What comes next?
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Rescue efforts are still underway and it will likely take
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weeks to recover all victims. That includes survivors who are
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stuck atop buildings that rescue teams are struggling to access
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and hundreds of workers who are trapped in hydropower tunnels.
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A months-long cleanup effort will follow and some people may
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never find their loved ones' bodies, which may have even
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been swept to India, reports The Guardian's Hannah Ellis Peterson.
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According to Reuters' Saruba Sharma, Nepali officials estimate that it
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will cost $ 4 to $ 5 billion, or about a tenth
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of the country's economy, to rebuild. Now, National Geographic has
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an article headlined, How Wildfire is Erasing the Forests of
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the American West. It's from August 31st. One summer evening
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in 1996, an abandoned campfire caught the woods of the
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Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico. on fire. The next day,
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the wildfire exploded. The fire trapped 48 firefighters on a
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dirt road, forcing them to deploy their shelters, and flames
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advanced on the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Ultimately, the fire
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consumed an engine and burned the arms of a firefighter
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who lost his gloves, but it did not reach the lab.
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What surprised everyone in the aftermath was the number of
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dead trees. The Dome Fire burned at such an intensity
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across 6,600 acres, some 40% of its total path, that
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it killed swaths of mixed conifers and ponderosa pines that
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had survived centuries of fires. But this fire was hotter
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than the others. People said the trees would come back,
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no big deal, and indeed they started to. Then, in 2000,
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a larger fire, the Cerro Grande, ripped through the scar
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of the dome fire. Then, in 2011, a much larger fire,
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the Lost Conscious, ripped through the scars of both fires.
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Now 30 years have passed since the dome fire, but
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the trees have not come back. Ridgelines of the Jemez Mountains,
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once cloaked in green canopies, are now craggy, barren, and brown.
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An emerging body of research is showing that those early fires,
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once novelties across the West, have become the norm. According
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to a paper published in late June in the Proceedings
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of the National Academy of Sciences, forest-eliminating wildfires are now
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the most common type of fire in California. Research published
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in the past few years suggests much of the West
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is following the same trend. In the last four decades,
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largely because of wildfires, 9% of forests across the West
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have died. While it is too soon to know the
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ecological fallout from the many fires burning this summer across
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the western U.S., research suggests that the damage may leave
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permanent scars. In the coming century, parts of the region
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will lose up to a third of its forests. To
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look for clues to how this will happen, look to
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what's unfolding in the Jamez Mountains, scientists say. And what's
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happening there, they also say, is dire. Before we started
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putting them out in the 1880s, most of the wildfires
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out west were so-called good fires, crawling across the forest
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floor every 2 to 20 years, consuming logs and leaf
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litter and shrubs and grass. Fires maintained ecosystems. Today, they
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are just as likely to kill them. The high-severity fires
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seen more frequently today are the kinds of fires whose
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smoke crosses the continent to dim the sun in New
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York City. They dominate the land after 140 years of
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fire suppression policies and practices have largely banished good fires.
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As the West continues to heat up and dry out,
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the nearly century and a half of backlogged fuel in
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the forests are going up all at once. Quote, basically,
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as long as you have a bunch of fuels, then
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the drier climate is going to give you bigger fires,
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said Park Williams, a geography professor at the University of California,
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Los Angeles. and an author on the recent paper. Quote,
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it's easier to start fires and it's easier to spread fires,
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end quote. The Jemez Mountains are ground zero for this phenomenon.
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According to Andres Huion, the lead author on a paper
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published today explaining how fire is reshaping the mountains. He
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notes that scientists have studied this landscape's fire history more
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than anywhere else in North America. Wyan, a postdoctoral researcher
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at the New Mexico Forest and Watershed Restoration Institute, compares
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the process unfolding in the Jemez to a mouse eating cheese. Ultimately,
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his and his colleagues' research suggests the mouse will likely
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eat the entire wedge. By 2065, Wyand predicts fewer than
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half of the conifer forests of the Jemez will remain.
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By 2115, between 5 and 33% will remain. Quote, we
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will likely not have forests to pass on to our
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next generation if everything keeps burning the way it is
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burning and you just let it burn, he said. The
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forecasts are dire. It's just unsustainable, end quote. Many of
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these wildfires have more in common with bombs than they
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do natural processes. The kind of wildfire that most western
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forests evolved alongside spreads outward, its temperatures spiking highest along
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the leading edge as it consumes new fuel, stopping when
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it runs out of things to burn or is put
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out by rain or the absence of wind. But this
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more severe species of wildfire often sustains itself, feeding on
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fuels stockpiled in the forest By a century of fire exclusion,
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the fire concentrates heat at its center. Getting so hot,
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it sometimes creates its own weather. The pyrocumulonimbus clouds have
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been documented billowing 25,000 feet above these fires. These clouds
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release downdrafts that drive wind along the surface of the fire,
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blowing flames outward and killing everything in its path. Well,
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that's all for today's Diary of Science and Nature, your
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reader is Kelly Taylor. Now stay tuned for further programming
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on Radio Eye.
