Desdemona Despair – Page 115 – Blogging the End of the World™

Spatial cumulative extents of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill. (A) Cumulative NESDIS anomaly daily composites integrated from 20 April 2010 to 21 July 2010. Daily fishing closures are marked with gray lines; the cumulative fishing closure area is marked with a thick dashed yellow line. The black star represents the location of the DWH blowout. (B) Cumulative value of daily average oil concentrations (ppb), integrated across the same time span as (A) and across water depths. Vertical depth layers are 0 to 1 m, 1 to 20 m, and in 20-m increments down to 2500 m. Sediment and water samples with higher-than-background concentration are marked in bright green and dark blue circles, respectively. Red crosses in (B) represent approximate locations of DWH-related oil detections reported in previous studies. Daily fishery closures are marked with black polygons; the cumulative fishery closure area is marked with a dashed thick polygon. AB, Apalachee Bay; DP, Deep Plume; EFS, East Florida Shelf; FK, Florida Keys; LC, Loop Current System; TXS, Texas Shores; WFS, West Florida Shelf. (C) Categorization of the modeled oil spill are as follows: (i) nontoxic, PAH concentrations above background level and smaller than 0.5 and 1 ppb at the surface (depth, 0 to 1 m) and in the water column (depth, >1 m), respectively; (ii) toxic-to-biota and invisible, PAH concentrations 0.5 to 17 ppb at the surface and above 1 ppb in the water column; and (iii) toxic and visible, PAH concentrations above 17 ppb. In (C), categories were computed according to maximal concentrations across time. (D) Duration of toxic concentrations across the domain. (E) LC50 of 12 experiments examining the photoinduced toxicity to blue crab (31), fiddler crab (33), mahi mahi (29, 30), red drum (32), and speckled sea trout (32) (for more details, see table S2). (F) The spatial extent of the toxic concentrations from (E); color codes in (F) are according to bar colors in (E), representing concentrations exceeding LC50. In (F), toxic PAH of 0.5 ppb was concentrations were considered for surface waters only (depth, 0 to 1 m). Graphic: Berenshtein, et al., 2020 / Science Advances

February 17, 2020

The toxic reach of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was much larger and deadlier than previous estimates – “Large areas of the Gulf of Mexico were exposed to invisible and toxic oil that extended beyond the boundaries of the satellite footprint and the fishery closures”

By Darryl Fears 12 February 2020 (The Washington Post) – The spread of oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was far worse than previously believed, new research has found. As the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history approaches its 10th anniversary in April, a study by two University of Miami researchers […]

A swarm of locusts descends on Enziu, Kenya, on 24 January 2020. Video: Agencia EFE / TIME

February 16, 2020

Hundreds of billions of locusts, fueled by conflict and climate change, are swarming East Africa – 400-fold increase in their numbers by June 2020 projected

By Madeleine Stone 14 February 2020 (National Geographic) – East Africa is in the midst of a crisis that sounds like something out of the Book of Exodus: A plague of locusts is spreading across the region, threatening the food supply of tens of millions. City-sized swarms of the dreaded pests are wreaking havoc as […]

Residents look on as flames burn through bush in Lake Tabourie, Australia, on 4 January 2020. Photo: Brett Hemmings / Getty Images

February 16, 2020

15 years after the Kyoto Protocol went into force, the climate crisis is worse than ever – “If the U.S. had been in from the start, it would have been a different trajectory altogether”

By Rosie McCall 16 February 2020 (Newsweek) – The Kyoto Protocol went to force a full 15 years ago today—and yet, the climate crisis is more urgent than ever. On Sunday, 15 years will have passed since the Kyoto Protocol was ratified on February 16, 2005, which was eight years after it was negotiated back […]

Surface air temperature anomaly for January 2020 relative to the January average for the period 1981-2010. Data: ERA5. Graphic: Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF

February 12, 2020

January 2020 warmest on record in Europe – Earth matched its warmest January on record – “The lack of snow and the warmth is really unheard of. Monthly records were not just broken, they were shattered with large margins.”

By Matthew Cappucci 4 February 2020 (The Washington Post) – Europe just concluded its warmest January on record, coming on the heels of a toasty December and making the 2019-2020 winter season a contender for the warmest Europe has observed. Although the calendar has flipped to a new decade, there has been no slowing in […]

Polygrapha suprema (Schaus, 1920), a rare and endangered butterfly exclusive to the high mountains of Atlantic Forest (Brazil), is threatened by habitat loss. Photo: Augusto Rosa

February 11, 2020

Half-a-million insect species face extinction – Scientists warn humanity about worldwide insect decline – “The current insect extinction crisis is deeply worrying. Yet, what we know is only the tip of the iceberg.”

By Marlowe Hood 10 February 2020 (PhysOrg) – Half of the one million animal and plant species on Earth facing extinction are insects, and their disappearance could be catastrophic for humankind, scientists have said in a “warning to humanity”. “The current insect extinction crisis is deeply worrying,” said Pedro Cardoso, a biologist at the Finnish […]

Swimmers observe beach erosion is seen at Collaroy on the Northern Beaches as a high tide and large waves impact the coast on 10 February 2020 in Sydney, Australia. The Sydney area experienced its wettest weekend in more than 20 years, with strong winds and torrential rain causing flash flooding across the city. Photo: Brook Mitchell / Getty Images

February 11, 2020

Heaviest rain in decades brings Australia drought, fire relief – Scientists rush to predict mudflows from denuded hillsides

By Ainslie Chandler 10 February 2020 (Bloomberg) – Torrential rains along Australia’s east coast caused widespread power outages and property damage at the weekend, and while the downpour has doused many wildfires there are now concerns that drinking water supplies will be contaminated by the flooding. Sydney experienced its wettest 24 hours since 1992, with […]

Average U.S. temperature for December and January combined, from December-January 1895-96 to 2019-20. Graphic: NOAA / NCEI

February 10, 2020

January 2020 sees warmest winter in U.S. history so far

By Bob Henson 6 February 2020 (Weather Underground) – The first two months of meteorological winter (December 2019 – January 2020) were the warmest on record for the contiguous U.S. in data going back to 1895. NOAA provided the January data and images on Thursday ahead of its monthly U.S. climate report. The average national temperature […]

Breakdown of total fossil fuel support in PIDG, 2002-2018, by sub-sector ($USD). Data: Source: Private Infrastructure Development Group Annual Report 2018. Graphic: Global Witness

February 6, 2020

Obscure investment fund uses UK aid money to finance fossil fuel projects – “A farcical situation where the Government, on one hand, spends aid money to mitigate climate change, and on the other hand finances fossil fuels all over the world”

6 February 2020 (Global Witness) – We are at the beginning of a year of climate spin by the British Government. This year, the UK will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow. While the Government claims to be a ‘climate leader’, we reveal how a little-known investment group funded by the […]

Laurence Cowie on his property looking at the spreading bushfire in Canberra on 1 February 2020. Photo: Brook Mitchell / Getty Images

February 6, 2020

Plants safely store toxic mercury. Bushfires and climate change bring it back into our environment.

By Larissa Schneider, Colin Cooke, Nathan D Stansell, and Simon Haberle 29 January 2020 (The Conversation) – Climate change and bushfire may exacerbate recent mercury pollution and increase exposure to the poisonous neurotoxin, according to our study published in the Journal of Paleolimnology. Mercury stored in plants is released during bushfires, suggesting Australia is particularly at […]

Satellite view of tropospheric NO2 VCDs over the Permian basin for August 2018, seen from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) and Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) aboard NASA and ESA satellites. OMI has a ground pixel size of 13 x 24 km2 and was gridded onto a 0.07 by 0.07 degrees latitude/longitude grid. TROPOMI has a footprint of 3.5 x 7 km2 and was averaged onto a 0.02 by 0.02 degrees latitude/longitude grid. The increased spatial resolution of the TROPOMI measurements is clearly visible. The red outline denotes the area used for the multivariate regression fits. Graphic: Dix, et al., 2020 / Geophysical Research Letters

February 5, 2020

Air pollution from oil and gas production sites visible from space – U.S. and European satellites help scientists measure nitrogen dioxide from drilling, production, and flaring

15 January 2020 (CIRES) – Oil and gas production has doubled in some parts of the United States in the last two years, and scientists can use satellites to see impacts of that trend: a significant increase in the release of the lung-irritating air pollutant nitrogen dioxide, for example, and a more-than-doubling of the amount […]