31 December 2018 (Desdemona Despair) – At the end of every year since 2010, Des reviews all of the year’s posts and picks a few that are the “doomiest”. Because there are nearly 1,000 posts in a typical year, this is a time-intensive – and depressing – project. In November 2018, after trolling through all of the posts from January through August, Des finally decided that this manual indexing is ridiculous – after all, Des is a programmer in real life, and surely some of this laborious process can be automated.
After a few weekends of coding against Blogger’s Atom-based archive format and the Blogger API, Des developed the DesdemonaIndexer. This library extracts all of the blog posts from a Blogger archive, converts them into proper business objects, and saves them to a much simpler XML file. From this file, reports like Doomiest Graphs are generated.In the past, these year-end summary posts were whittled down to the “doomiest” 50, which is an arbitrary number, by using arbitrary rules that depend on Desdemona’s mood that day. This year, Des is just posting them all, and you can decide which are the doomiest.
Without further exposition, here are the doomiest graphs of 2018.
Low and declining oxygen levels in the open ocean and coastal waters
4 January 2018 (SERC) – In the past 50 years, the amount of water in the open ocean with zero oxygen has gone up more than fourfold. In coastal water bodies, including estuaries and seas, low-oxygen sites have increased more than 10-fold since 1950. Scientists expect oxygen to continue dropping even outside these zones as Earth warms. To halt the decline, the world needs to rein in both climate change and nutrient pollution, an international team of scientists asserted in a new paper published 4 January 2018 in Science.
“Oxygen is fundamental to life in the oceans,” said Denise Breitburg, lead author and marine ecologist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. “The decline in ocean oxygen ranks among the most serious effects of human activities on the Earth’s environment.”
The study came from a team of scientists from GO2NE (Global Ocean Oxygen Network), a new working group created in 2016 by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission. The review paper is the first to take such a sweeping look at the causes, consequences and solutions to low oxygen worldwide, in both the open ocean and coastal waters. The article highlights the biggest dangers to the ocean and society, and what it will take to keep Earth’s waters healthy and productive.
18 January 2018 (Freedom House) – Political rights and civil liberties around the world deteriorated to their lowest point in more than a decade in 2017, extending a period characterized by emboldened autocrats, beleaguered democracies, and the United States’ withdrawal from its leadership role in the global struggle for human freedom.Democracy is in crisis. The values it embodies—particularly the right to choose leaders in free and fair elections, freedom of the press, and the rule of law—are under assault and in retreat globally.A quarter-century ago, at the end of the Cold War, it appeared that totalitarianism had at last been vanquished and liberal democracy had won the great ideological battle of the 20th century.
Estimated U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions growth, 2016-2019
9 January 2018 (EIA) – Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions: EIA estimates that energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide decreased by 1.0% in 2017 and forecasts these levels to increase by 1.7% in 2018 and by 0.2% in 2019. These forecasts are sensitive to assumptions about weather, economic growth, and fuel prices.
HOUSTON, 15 January 2018 (Reuters) – Surging shale production is poised to push U.S. oil output to more than 10 million barrels per day – toppling a record set in 1970 and crossing a threshold few could have imagined even a decade ago.
And this new record, expected within days, likely won’t last long. The U.S. government forecasts that the nation’s production will climb to 11 million barrels a day by late 2019, a level that would rival Russia, the world’s top producer.
The economic and political impacts of soaring U.S. output are breathtaking, cutting the nation’s oil imports by a fifth over a decade, providing high-paying jobs in rural communities and lowering consumer prices for domestic gasoline by 37 percent from a 2008 peak.
Change in PM2.5 pollution across China in 2017, year over year
29 January 2018 (The Globe and Mail) – The sight of sharp horizons and cerulean skies in the Chinese capital was, not so long ago, rare enough that it merited special designation.
There was “APEC Blue,” around the time Beijing hosted world leaders in 2014. There was “Parade Blue” for a 2015 military march past Tiananmen Square. There were multiple instances of “Two Sessions Blue” around annual political meetings – each permutation of blue the temporary result of government fiat. Once the parades, the foreign dignitaries and the politicians dispersed, the redolence of burnt coal returned.But in the past few months, Beijingers have been toying with a less-familiar idea: Could blue skies be here to stay? Or has China’s ability to manufacture blue skies just grown more skilled, producing clean air around Beijing but leaving others mired in a toxic atmosphere? Both, it seems, are true.
Grey Water Footprint related to anthropogenic phosphorus loads from the agricultural, industrial, and domestic sectors, 2002–2010
WASHINGTON D.C., 25 January 2018 (AGU) – Man-made phosphorus pollution is reaching dangerously high levels in freshwater basins around the world, according to new research.
A new study published in Water Resources Research, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, estimated the global amount of phosphorus from human activities that entered Earth’s freshwater bodies from 2002 to 2010.Phosphorus is a common component of mineral and manure fertilizers because it boosts crop yields. However, a large portion of phosphorus applied as fertilizer is not taken up by plants, and either builds up in the soil or washes into rivers, lakes and coastal seas, according to the study’s authors.
30 January 2018 (Zachary Labe) – Arctic sea ice extent had not reached 13 million km2 by 30 January 2018, which is a week past the previous record. In the 1980s, this was normally surpassed in mid December.
NEW YORK, 31 January 2018 (Financial Times) – US oil production has returned to its record high point, 47 years after the previous peak during the final days of the last Texas oil boom, as the shale revolution that was temporarily set back by low crude prices has reignited.
The government’s Energy Information Administration estimated on Wednesday that US output was running at just under 10.04m barrels per day last November, fractionally below the previous record set in November 1970.Soaring output from shale wells has put the US on course to overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s largest crude producer, shaking up oil markets and the geopolitics of energy.
U.S. military sites that indicated effects from climate change(flooding, extreme temperatures, wind, drought, wildfire)
2 February 2018 (The Center for Climate and Security) – On Friday, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics released a comprehensive new survey of climate change-related risks to military infrastructure worldwide. The study, prosaically titled “Climate-Related Risk to DoD Infrastructure Initial Vulnerability Assessment Survey (SLVAS) Report,” is a response to a Congressional request from 2016,* based on the DoD’s 2015 commitment to conducting a:The vulnerability assessment, based on a qualitative survey of military personnel at each site (see the survey questions on page 19), does not offer any specific cost estimates related to these vulnerabilities, but it does paint a concerning picture of current climate change-related risks to military installations** both at home and abroad, with around 50% of 1,684 sites reporting damage from six key categories of those risks:
Flooding due to storm surge
Flooding due to non-storm surge events (e.g., rain, snow, sleet, ice, river overflow)
Extreme temperatures (both hot and cold)
Wind
Drought
Wildfire
Given that rapid climate change is projected to exacerbate most of the above categories of risks throughout this century (its effect on wind is less certain), the reasonable expectation is that vulnerabilities to military sites will increase unless significant resources are devoted to adapting DoD assets to this changing operational environment, and/or the rate and scale of climate change is reduced. What is potentially significant about this survey, however, is how widespread climate change-related risks to military assets already are.
But the warmth flooding east Siberia and parts of the Arctic may, in turn, displace the frigid air that is normally pooled there sending it surging south into the north central and Northeastern U.S. through mid-February.
Mercury in Northern Hemisphere permafrost zones for four soil layers
WASHINGTON D.C., 5 February 2018 (AGU) – Researchers have discovered permafrost in the northern hemisphere stores massive amounts of natural mercury, a finding with significant implications for human health and ecosystems worldwide.In a new study, scientists measured mercury concentrations in permafrost cores from Alaska and estimated how much mercury has been trapped in permafrost north of the equator since the last Ice Age.
The study reveals northern permafrost soils are the largest reservoir of mercury on the planet, storing nearly twice as much mercury as all other soils, the ocean and the atmosphere combined.
Monthly average atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa, January 2014 – January 2018
2 February 2018 (RealClimate) – Based on NOAA’s ESRL “Trends in Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” data, in particular “Mauna Loa CO2 monthly mean data”.January 2018 continues the record-breaking growth of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Current estimates for the January monthly mean are ~408 ppm – another Record-Making High for January has been set (once the final figures are published.)
11 February 2018 (Desdemona Despair) – The year 2017 was the second-worst year for wildfires in the U.S., according to data published by the National Interagency Fire Center. Nationwide, wildfires burned a total 10,026,086 acres, just 99,063 acres shy of the record, 10,125,149 acres, set in 2015. In December, 2017 was on track to be the third-worst year on record, but California’s deadliest fire season, which included the Thomas fire, California’s largest on record, pushed 2017 to the Number Two spot. All of the Top Ten wildfire seasons have occurred since 2000.
Amount of plastic collected along the route of the 2017-2018 Volvo Ocean Race
12 February 2018 (The Guardian) – Microplastics have been found in some of the most remote and uncharted regions of the oceans raising more concerns over the global scale of plastic pollution.
Samples taken from the middle of the South Indian Ocean – at latitude 45.5 degrees south – show microplastic particles detected at relatively high volumes. Sören Gutekunst, from the Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, who analysed the samples, said the data showed 42 particles per cubic metre, which was surprising given the remoteness of the area.
“Data on microplastics has not been taken from this extremely remote area before and what we found was relatively high levels,” he said. “There are places in the ocean which are not being observed and that is why it is so special for us to be doing this. It is amazing that we have the opportunity and this could lead to much further knowledge about what is happening with microplastics in the ocean.”
Global and regional impact of subsidy removal and NDCs on CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry under low oil prices
12 February 2018 (ClimateWire) – Ending financial assistance for fossil fuel companies has long been discussed as a tactic to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and encourage investment in renewables. Oil, natural gas and coal companies worldwide receive hundreds of billions of dollars each year in tax breaks or other subsidies—and some experts argue that cutting them off would drive prices up and consumption down.
It’s a simple idea, but one that’s been sparsely investigated by scientists. Now, new research suggests that removing fossil fuel subsidies might not have the global effect that some climate advocates were hoping for.
The study, published yesterday in the journal Nature, used an ensemble of five models to investigate the impact of ending fossil fuel subsidies worldwide by the year 2030, assuming both high and low oil prices in the future. Doing so would have a modest impact on global greenhouse gas emissions, the research finds, cutting carbon dioxide emissions by a half-billion to 2 billion metric tons annually.
Ozone anomalies over 60°S–60°N between 1985 and 2016
14 February 2018 (Imperial College London) – The ozone layer is recovering at the poles, but unexpected decreases in part of the atmosphere may be preventing recovery at lower latitudes.Global ozone has been declining since the 1970s owing to certain man-made chemicals. Since these were banned, parts of the layer have been recovering, particularly at the poles.
However, the new result, published today in the European Geosciences Union journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, finds that the bottom part of the ozone layer at more populated latitudes is not recovering. The cause is currently unknown.
16 February 2018 (NASA) – Global sea level rise has been accelerating in recent decades, rather than increasing steadily, according to a new study based on 25 years of NASA and European satellite data.
This acceleration, driven mainly by increased melting in Greenland and Antarctica, has the potential to double the total sea level rise projected by 2100 when compared to projections that assume a constant rate of sea level rise, according to lead author Steve Nerem. Nerem is a professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder, a fellow at Colorado’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), and a member of NASA’s Sea Level Change team.If the rate of ocean rise continues to change at this pace, sea level will rise 26 inches (65 centimeters) by 2100 – enough to cause significant problems for coastal cities, according to the new assessment by Nerem and colleagues from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; CU Boulder; the University of South Florida in Tampa; and Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. The team, driven to understand and better predict Earth’s response to a warming world, published their work on 12 February 2019 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Abundance of the three largest orangutan metapopulations,1999-2015 and projected abundance for 2020 and 2050
15 February 2018 (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology) – Nearly 50 years of conservation efforts have been unable to prevent orangutan numbers on Borneo from plummeting. The latest data published by a team from 38 international institutions, led by researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and Liverpool John Moores University in Great Britain, suggests that between 1999 and 2015 the total number of Bornean orangutans was reduced by more than 100,000 animals.
This result means two things. First, there were more orangutans on Borneo than previously estimated. Second, they are disappearing even faster than researchers had envisioned. The most dramatic rates of decline in orangutan populations were found in deforested areas and in areas converted into agricultural land. Surprisingly however, the absolute number of orangutans that were lost was greatest in selectively logged and primary forests, where most orangutans occur. In these forest areas human pressures, such as conflict killing, poaching, and the collection of baby orangutans for the pet trade have probably been the major drivers of decline.
The new study, which represents the most comprehensive data coverage to date, is in line with another recently published analysis of orangutan population trends, and reinforces the recent uplisting of the Bornean orangutan to Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List.
Lead author Maria Voigt of the Research Center iDiv and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology explains why the current rates of decline are so much higher than previously thought: “As we collected more data on orangutan density and presence our ability to model their distribution and population trends improves.”
Voigt adds: “This is how we learned that orangutans are distributed much more widely and also occur in more degraded forest areas and even some plantations”.
Box modeling of petrochemical VOC emissions in outdoor Los Angeles air and in buildings
15 February 2018 (NOAA) – Emissions from volatile chemical products like perfumes, paints and other scented consumer items now rival vehicles as a pollution source in greater Los Angeles, according to a surprising new NOAA-led study.
Even though 15 times more petroleum is consumed as fuel than is used as ingredients in industrial and consumer products, the amount of chemical vapors emitted to the atmosphere in scented products is roughly the same, said lead author Brian McDonald, a CIRES scientist working at NOAA.A paper presenting these study findings was published today in Science.
12 February 2018 (MSNBC) – President Trump released his fiscal 2019 budget on Monday, 12 February 2018. Steve Rattner says the country’s budgetary outlook is “potentially apocalyptic”.
Global map showing change in sea surface height, 1992-2014
19 February 2018 (NASA) – Global sea level rise has been accelerating in recent decades, according to a new study based on 25 years of NASA and European satellite data. This acceleration has been driven mainly by increased ice melting in Greenland and Antarctica, and it has the potential to double the total sea level rise projected by 2100, according to lead author Steve Nerem, a scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and the University of Colorado.If things continue to change at the observed pace, sea level will rise 65 centimeters (26 inches) by 2100, enough to cause significant problems for coastal cities.
The team—comprised of scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Colorado, the University of South Florida, and Old Dominion University—recently published their work in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“This is almost certainly a conservative estimate,” said Nerem, who is a member of NASA’s Sea Level Change team. “Our extrapolation assumes that sea level continues to change in the future as it has over the last 25 years. Given the large changes we are seeing in the ice sheets today, that is not likely.”
Average monthly Arctic ice extent, January 1979 to January 2018
6 February 2018 (NSIDC) – The new year was heralded by a week of record low daily ice extents, with the January average beating out 2017 for a new record low. Ice grew through the month at near-average rates, and in the middle of the month daily extents were higher than for 2017. However, by the end of January, extent was again tracking below 2017. The monthly average extent of 13.06 million square kilometers (5.04 million square miles) was 1.36 million square kilometers (525,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 average, and 110,000 square kilometers (42,500 square miles) below the previous record low monthly average in 2017.
The pattern seen in previous months continued, with below average extent in the Barents and Kara Seas, as well as within the Bering Sea. The ice edge remained nearly constant throughout the month within the Barents Sea, and slightly retreated in the East Greenland Sea. By contrast, extent increased in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, off the coast of Newfoundland, in the eastern Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk. Compared to 2017, at the end of the month, ice was less extensive in the western Bering Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk and north of Svalbard, more extensive in the eastern Bering Sea and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Overall, the Arctic gained 1.42 million square kilometers (548,000 square miles) of ice during January 2018. […]
The linear rate of decline for January is 47,700 square kilometers (18,400 square miles) per year, or 3.3 percent per decade. […]
In the Southern Hemisphere, after January 11 sea ice began tracking low, leading to a January average extent that was the second lowest on record. The lowest extent for this time of year was in 2017. Extent is below average in the Ross Sea and the West Amundsen Seas, while elsewhere extent remains close to average. The low ice extent is puzzling, given that air temperatures at the 925 hPa level are near average or below average (relative to the 1981 to 2010 period) over much of the Southern Ocean. The Weddell and Amundsen Seas were 1 to 2 degrees Celsius (2 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit) below average. Slightly above-average temperatures were the rule in the northwestern Ross Sea. [more]
End of the Boom: Millennials are worse off on average than the generation born between 1966 and 1980
21 February 2018 (Bloomberg News) – The income boom enjoyed by people born between 1966 and 1980 has turned to “bust” for the generation that followed them, according to a report published Monday.
In an analysis of eight high-income countries, the Resolution Foundation think tank found that millennials in their early 30s have household incomes 4 percent lower on average than members of so-called Generation X at the same age.
Britain and Spain stand out. In the U.K., Generation X were 54 percent better off than baby boomers born between 1946 and 1965. By contrast, millennials, born between 1980 and 2000, had incomes just 6 percent higher than those of Generation X at the same age.
Change in the percentage of summer (May-September) days classified as heat-wave days in Europe
21 February 2018 (Newcastle University) – A landmark study shows the impact of flooding, droughts and heatwaves by 2050-2100 will exceed previous predictions. The research, by Newcastle University, UK, has for the first time analysed changes in flooding, droughts, and heatwaves for all European cities using all climate models.
Using projections from all available climate models (associated with the high emission scenario RCP8.5 which implies a 2.6°C to 4.8°C increase in global temperature), the team showed results for three possible futures which they called the low, medium and high impact scenarios.
GFS 500mb geopotential height and anomaly over the eastern seaboard of the U.S., 21 February 2018
22 February 2018 (Weather Underground) – Astonishing summer-like heat cooked the Eastern U.S. on Wednesday, smashing all-time records for February warmth in cities in at least ten states, from Georgia to Maine. At least 24 cities recorded their hottest February temperature on record on Wednesday, including New York City (78°), Hartford, CT (74°) and Concord, NH (74°).
According to Weather Underground weather historian Christopher C. Burt, February 20 – 21 marked the most extraordinary heat event to ever affect the Northeastern quadrant of the U.S. during the month of February, since official records began in the late 1800s. He catalogued the following eight states that tied or beat all-time February state heat records over the past two days, noting that in the case of Maine and Vermont, “It is simply amazing to beat a state temperature record by some 8°F!”
The record February heat was caused by an unusually pronounced kink in the jet stream that brought a big trough of low pressure over the Western U.S. (accompanied by very cold temperatures) and a record-strength ridge of high pressure that locked in over the eastern half of the U.S. This ridge brought exceptional warmth miles above the eastern U.S. and northwest Atlantic. All else being equal, warmer air is less dense than cooler air, so a deep, warm air mass raises the heights of various benchmark heights such as 500 mb (roughly the midpoint of the atmosphere’s density, almost four miles up). As shown in Figure 2 below, the 500-mb map at 12Z Wednesday (7 am EDT) was simply mind-blowing for mid-February.
Estimated rainfall trends around the Seattle area, 1890-2017
23 February 2018 (The Seattle Times) – Attention, Seattle residents: Have you noticed more steady, long-lasting rainstorms in a city better known for gray skies, short showers and drizzle? Turns out you’re on to something.
Over the last 15 years, the city’s had more extreme rain, according to a new study by Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) officials, who say the weather is a climate-change preview.“This confirms our anecdotal evidence,” said James Rufo-Hill, an SPU meteorologist. “For years, people have been saying, ‘I think the rain is getting worse around here,’ and now the data shows that.”
The fading American Dream: Percent of US children earning more than their parents, by year of birth, 1940-1985
December 2016 (The Equality of Opportunity Project) – A defining feature of the “American Dream” is upward income mobility: the ideal that children have a higher standard of living than their parents. Our work shows that children’s prospects of earning more than their parents have fallen from 90% to 50% over the past half century. Understanding what has led to this erosion of the American Dream — and how we can revive it for future generations — is the motivation for the Equality of Opportunity Project.
We measure absolute mobility by comparing children’s household incomes at age 30 (adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index) with their parents’ household incomes at age 30. We find that rates of absolute mobility have fallen from approximately 90% for children born in 1940 to 50% for children born in the 1980s. Absolute income mobility has fallen across the entire income distribution, with the largest declines for families in the middle class. These findings are unaffected by using alternative price indices to adjust for inflation, accounting for taxes and transfers, measuring income at later ages, and adjusting for changes in household size.
Travel mode being substituted by ride-hailing services, like Uber and Lyft
BOSTON, 25 February 2018 (Associated Press) – One promise of ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft was fewer cars clogging city streets. But studies suggest the opposite: that ride-hailing companies are pulling riders off buses, subways, bicycles and their own feet and putting them in cars instead.And in what could be a new wrinkle, a service by Uber called Express Pool now is seen as directly competing with mass transit.
Uber and Lyft argue that in Boston, for instance, they complement public transit by connecting riders to hubs like Logan Airport and South Station. But they have not released their own specific data about rides, leaving studies up to outside researchers.
Surface air temperature for the Arctic averaged above 80°N, 25 February 2018
27 February 2018 (The Washington Post) – The sun won’t rise at the North Pole until March 20, and it’s normally close to the coldest time of year, but an extraordinary and possibly historic thaw swelled over the tip of the planet this weekend. Analyses show that the temperature warmed to the melting point as an enormous storm pumped an intense pulse of heat through the Greenland Sea.Temperatures may have soared as high as 35 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) at the pole, according to the U.S. Global Forecast System model. While there are no direct measurements of temperature there, Zack Labe, a climate scientist working on his PhD at the University of California at Irvine, confirmed that several independent analyses showed “it was very close to freezing,” which is more than 50 degrees (30 degrees Celsius) above normal.
Global fishing vessel activity, May 2017 – November 2017
2 March 2018 (Mongabay) – Industrial fishing takes place across more than 55 percent of the world’s oceans, according to a new study published in Science.
Fishing is vital for food security and livelihoods across the globe, yet the extent of industrial fishing has remained largely unknown. Now, a team of researchers has tried to solve this problem by using the Automatic Identification System (AIS), an automatic ship-tracking system that uses satellite and land-based receivers to monitor a ship’s location, originally designed to help prevent ship collisions.To see where and when fishing takes place, the researchers tracked 77,000 industrial ships, including more than 75 percent of large-sized commercial vessels, using 22 billion AIS positions from 2012 to 2016.
2 March 2018 (The Washington Post) – For the second year in a row, spring has sprung early. In the Mid-Atlantic, cherry blossoms started to pop out of their buds in mid-February, and the crocuses have all but come and gone. Temperatures have dipped below freezing on only five mornings this February in the District, and nature is playing along — albeit, perhaps, grudgingly.
As much as spring is welcome when it arrives, it seems to feel better after a long winter. This year, winter never really started. December and January both got off to a cold start, but that quickly changed through the end of those months. By mid-February, we saw March flowers pop out of the ground. Winter is dead.
According to the National Phenology Network, spring is running 20 days or more ahead of schedule in parts of the Ohio River Valley and the Mid-Atlantic. That will soon be the case in the Midwest and the Northeast.
Continental-scale fragment size distribution of tropical and subtropical forests
14 February 2018 (Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research) – Tropical forests around the world play a key role in the global carbon cycle and harbour more than half of the species worldwide. However, increases in land use during the past decades caused unprecedented losses of tropical forest. Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) have adapted a method from physics to mathematically describe the fragmentation of tropical forests. In the scientific journal Nature, they explain how this allows to model and understand the fragmentation of forests on a global scale.
They found that forest fragmentation in all three continents is close to a critical point beyond which fragment number will strongly increase. This will have severe consequences for biodiversity and carbon storage.
In order to analyse global patterns of forest fragmentation, a UFZ research group led by Prof. Andreas Huth used remote sensing data that quantify forest cover in the tropics in an extremely high resolution of 30 meters, resulting in more than 130 million forest fragments. To their surprise they found that the fragment sizes followed on all three continents similar frequency distributions. For example, the number of forest fragments smaller than 10,000 hectares is rather similar in all three regions: 11.2 percent in Central and South America, 9.9 percent in Africa and 9.2 percent in Southeast Asia.
“This is surprising because land use noticeably differs from continent to continent,” says Dr. Franziska Taubert, mathematician in Huth’s team and first author of the study. For instance, very large forest areas are transformed into agricultural land in the Amazon region. By contrast, in the forests of Southeast Asia, often economically attractive tree species are taken from the forest.When searching for explanations for the identical fragmentation patterns, the UFZ modellers found their answer in physics.
“The fragment size distribution follows a power law with almost identical exponents on all three continents,” says biophysicist Andreas Huth. Such power laws are known from other natural phenomena such as forest fires, landslides and earthquakes. The breakthrough of their study is the ability to derive the observed power laws from percolation theory.
“This theory states that in a certain phase of deforestation the forest landscape exhibits fractal, self-similar structures, i.e., structures that can be found again and again on different levels,” explains Huth. “In physics, this is also referred to as the critical point or phase transition, which for example also occurs during the transition of water from a liquid to gaseous state,” added co-author Dr. Thorsten Wiegand from UFZ.
A particularly fascinating aspect of the percolation theory is that this universal size distribution is, at the critical point, independent of the small-scale mechanisms that led to fragmentation. This explains why all three continents show similar large-scale fragmentation patterns.
The prevalence of obesity and severe obesity among U.S. children 2 to 19 years of age, 1999-2016
3 March 2018 (Duke Health News) – Despite reports in recent years suggesting childhood obesity could be reaching a plateau in some groups, the big picture on obesity rates for children ages 2 to 19 remains unfavorable.
Three decades of rising childhood obesity continued their upward trend in 2016 according to a new analysis from Duke Health researchers. The findings, which appear 26 February 2018 in the journal Pediatrics, show 35.1 percent of children in the U.S. were overweight in 2016, a 4.7-percent increase compared to 2014.
“About four years ago, there was evidence of a decline in obesity in preschoolers,” said Asheley Cockrell Skinner, Ph.D., lead author and associate professor of population health sciences, who is also a member of the Duke Clinical Research Institute (DCRI).
“It appears any decline that may have been detected by looking at different snapshots in time or different data sets has reversed course. The long-term trend is clearly that obesity in children of all ages is increasing.”
US bank loans at least 90 days past due or in “non-accrual” status
NEW YORK (Financial Times) – Overdue US credit card debt has reached a seven-year high, underlining the difficulties faced by many consumers in spite of the strong performance of the economy.
Banking sector data show consumers were at least three months behind repayments or considered otherwise distressed on $11.9 billion of credit card debt at the turn of the year, a rise of 11.5 per cent during the fourth quarter.More Americans are also falling behind on their mortgages, for which problematic debt levels rose 5.2 per cent over the same period to $56.7 billion.
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