New research has revealed that as the lake bed of the Great Salt Lake dries out, it’s becoming a greater source of greenhouse gas emissions.

According to a study published in the journal One Earth, the dry parts of the Great Salt Lake in Utah contributed about 4.1 million tons of carbon emissions in 2020 alone, revealing that this lake bed and other drying lake beds could be contributing much more greenhouse gas emissions than expected.

The study revealed that the emissions from the Great Salt Lake led to around a 7% increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions for the state of Utah in 2020.

“Human-caused desiccation of Great Salt Lake is exposing huge areas of lake bed and releasing massive quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” Soren Brothers, lead researcher of the study and the Allan and Helaine Shiff Curator of Climate Change at the Royal Ontario Museum, said in a statement. “The significance of lake desiccation as a driver of climate change needs to be addressed in greater detail and considered in climate change mitigation and watershed planning.”

^{Historic full lake levels and bays (1985; Landsat) and recent low levels (2022, NASA Earth Observatory). One Earth}

The researchers measured emissions of carbon dioxide and methane in the dry areas of the lake from April to November, then adjusted the measurements after comparing the totals to the natural aquatic emissions. This allowed the team to determine how much of the emissions from the drying lake bed could be contributed to human activity.

Additionally, the results showed a strong link between increasing emissions from the lake bed and higher temperatures.

According to the Royal Ontario Museum, water levels of the Great Salt Lake varies from year to year, but levels have been declining in recent years, even reaching a record low in 2022. As The Guardian reported, the lake has lost about 73% of its water, in part driven by drought and global warming. Human activity, including drawing water for agricultural and residential use, have also contributed to declining water levels in the Great Salt Lake.

The Great Salt Lake spans about 1,700 square miles and is the largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere. As its water levels decline and concerns rise over emissions from the dry lake bed, there are other worries over a drying saline lake, too. In 2022, Utah officials warned about toxic air pollution that could be emitted from the lake bed as it dried out.

“I think the impacts on air quality, the impacts on migratory birds and other wildlife are maybe more pressing, locally,” Brothers told The Guardian. “But especially at a time when we are all trying to find ways to reduce our carbon footprint, as Salt Lake City is working to reduce emissions, this desiccating lake is adding some of that back.”

The study authors noted that greenhouse gas emissions from dry, exposed lake beds should be considered when deciding ways to improve water management and reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

The post Great Salt Lake Is Releasing Millions of Tons of Carbon Emissions, Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

https://www.ecowatch.com/great-salt-lake-carbon-emissions.html

Brian Skerry has been a National Geographic photographer for more than 25 years, focusing on life under the surface of waters around the world. He’s photographed whales, sharks, scallop farms and kelp forests, and through it all, he’s been inspired by what visual storytelling can accomplish.

“Good science and good visual storytelling, and people just sharing what they know, is an important way to move that needle in favor of a healthy future,” Skerry said in a recent interview. “I started diving 47 years ago exploring these waters, and it’s staggering to see just how much it’s changed.”

But Skerry has been alarmed of late by what he’s seen through his camera lens: nothing.

“It’s very hard to tell a story about loss by going out and photographing nothing,” Skerry said, referring to some dramatically different marine habitats. “Going out to some of these places that I describe, they don’t look anything like they used to.”

One way that Skerry is bringing the ocean – and specifically, the Gulf of Maine – to people around the world is through a new three-part PBS series Sea Change, for which he is the co-producer and a photographer. Sea Change examines the history and condition of this 7500-mile-long stretch of water.

One of the Gulf’s historical features is that it is fed by cold water from the Arctic, the warm Gulf stream from the South, and inland rivers that flowed out in the ocean, creating a near-perfect oceanic mix.

“It was formed after the last ice age, after the Laurentian ice sheets retreated,” Skerry said. “It left this perfect recipe of ingredients to create the proliferation of life.”

This life includes not only the lobster and seafood that the East Coast is now famous for, but 3,000 other marine species, not to mention marshes, estuaries and kelp forests. But the other famous fish, cod, from this region, was fished almost to extinction. 

“As we’ve overfished this body of water, I think we’ve created a lack of resiliency. It is weaker because of that,” said Skerry.

The overfishing of cod has been well-documented, but in more recent times, climate change has become the more immediate threat to the Gulf. The temperature of the Gulf of Maine water has been heating up faster than 99% of the world’s oceans, a result of glacier melt. This data is expounded on in a recent article Skerry wrote for National Geographic.  

“It’s like making a perfect cake. If you change the recipe a little bit, or don’t mix it just right, it changes dramatically,” Skerry said. 

Sea Change is a way to visually localize climate change.

“I wanted the audience to understand that climate change is not something that’s far away,” Skerry said. “It’s not happening just in the poles. It’s happening in your own backyard.”

One example covered in the series concerns Eastport, a place where he used to go on dives when he was younger. “You would see big schools of juvenile fish, pollock, codfish on the shipwrecks in Cape Cod Bay,” he said. “We would see invertebrates, sea anemones. There was just that abundance.”

And his experience when he returned to photograph for the documentary?

“I went into that same place, and it was just mud and bad visibility, and hardly any of those animals that I used to see,” Skerry said. “It was very dispiriting. You come out of the water at night or during the day, and you just kind of shake your head at how quickly this all changed.”

Another example of the change in the gulf is the explosion of the green crab population. Green crabs, an invasive and destructive species that feeds on seagrasses, thrive in the milder water. But the documentary puts a more positive spin on the species by showing some of the people who are adapting to climate change.

Mike Masi is a fourth-generation lobsterman who has made the shift to green crab fishing. Once the molting pattern of the green crabs was discovered, they could be fished and sold as soft-shell crabs. These soft-shell green crabs are now turning up on menus in the region. 

Sea Change also explores the indigenous population of the region and how clam farming is being affected by climate change. 

“Gaining the wisdom from those types of voices and the scientists and other people who have a deep connection to this region helps us understand the natural history,” Skerry said. 

Skerry and the crew also took some cameras out to Cashes Ledge, which is 80 miles off the coast of Maine and is known for its healthy kelp forest. The forest there has maintained its health mainly because it’s far enough off the coast.

“The scientists said it was as good as it was in the late 1980s,” Skerry said. “But there were troubling signs. There were these invasive red algae that we were seeing in the coastal forest that helps accelerate the decline of these kelp forests. So, this is a place that remains largely unprotected, and is a place that really cries out for protection.”

And as deep-sea mining begins to become more accepted, it’s places like the Cashes Ledge, and perhaps the 36,000 square miles of the Gulf of Maine at large, that need to be protected against not only climate change dangers, but the forthcoming devastation that will inevitably come from the mineral extraction of ocean floors.

“We’re living at this pivotal moment in history where maybe for the first time, humans understand both the problems and the solutions, and we just need that collective will to move toward the solutions,” Skerry said.

“At the end of the day, I think there is great hope. You know, I think what was exciting and encouraging for me were these people’s stories that, with every one of these characters, you see a resilience, you see a recognition of what’s happening, but also a desire to try to solve the problem.”

The post Gulf of Maine in Peril: PBS Documentary Explores the Ocean’s Threats and Resilience appeared first on EcoWatch.

https://www.ecowatch.com/brian-skerry-sea-change-documentary-maine-ecowatch.html

Far above Earth’s poles, swirling in the frigid stratosphere, are the polar vortexes: massive, freezing whirlwinds that strengthen in the winter and weaken in the summer. Right now, despite being in the dead of winter, Antarctica’s vortex is undergoing an unprecedented weakening, causing a massive heat wave across the continent.

“This heat wave is a near-record (or record) event for the region of Antarctica it’s having the biggest impact on,” Edward Blanchard, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, told The Washington Post in an email.

Antarctica’s vortex has weakened significantly in July, causing temperatures on massive swathes of the continent to soar to more than 50 degrees (10°C) above normal levels while pushing massive amounts of freezing air toward the equator.

These vortex weakenings are usually caused when warm air very quickly rises to the top of the vortex, destabilizing it.

Amy Butler, an atmospheric scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told The Washington Post that atmospheric waves have jostled the vortex this year, leading to high-altitude temperatures to soar in a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) event.

Every winter, the polar vortex, a ring of stormy weather, forms high above Antarctica in the stratosphere.

This year, the vortex is showing signs of warming & being disturbed

A disturbed vortex may contribute to stormier conditions in NZ & Australia in late July & August. pic.twitter.com/AUxVd60ytk

— NIWA Weather (@NiwaWeather) July 13, 2024

This year’s Antarctic SSW is already leading to unusually cold temperatures in the southern hemisphere, with Australia, New Zealand and the Southern Cone of South America experiencing unusual cold fronts. SSWs may not be the only factor in the vortexes destabilizing, however. Earth has seen record high temperatures since July, which scientists believe may have been a factor here. Antarctica has been warming as fast as the rest of the planet, according to a 2023 article in the journal Nature, as The Washington Post reported.

SSWs can have immense consequences on their respective hemispheres. In January 2014, an SSW led to a harsh winter in the U.S., causing subzero temperatures in multiple states. 2021’s SSW was particularly brutal, leading to a devastating winter when much of the continental U.S. saw temperatures dip well below zero and during which most of Texas’ electrical grid infamously went dark.

There’s typically a delayed effect between an SSW and colder weather farther from the poles, which can take up to a month. With the Antarctic’s record-high temperatures and SSW continuing, it’s hard to say to what extent this will have on conditions in the southern hemisphere or how far toward the equator areas will be affected in the coming weeks.

^{The United States’ extremely cold winter in 2021. NOAA}

Michael Dukes, director of forecasting at MetDesk, told The Guardian that most scientists have thought that the most significant effects of human-caused climate change would happen at the poles. “This is a great example of that,” he said. “In Antarctica generally that kind of warming in the winter and continuing in to summer months can lead to collapsing of the ice sheets,” he added.

The post Antarctica’s Record Heat Wave Brings Temps 50°F Above Normal appeared first on EcoWatch.

https://www.ecowatch.com/antarctica-heat-wave-record-temperatures-2024.html