Extreme cold snaps: Why temperatures still plummet to dangerous levels even as the planet warms
Even as the world smashes through one all-time heat record after another and speeds towards critical warming thresholds, brutal waves of deadly cold can still arrive in bomb cyclones that bring icy weather and deep snow – and add fuel for those who deny the climate crisis is real or significant.
But some scientists say that climate change – and more specifically rapid warming in the Arctic – may actually be increasing the likelihood that frigid, polar air can dive south.
Global climate change
Mark Oppenheim leads a discussion on climate change and the role of humanity, with special guests: Dr. Nathaniel Keohane, President of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions; Dr. R. Max Holmes, President and CEO of Woodwell Climate Research Center; & Erich Pica, President of Friends of the Earth & Friends of the Earth Action.
It’s in the rules to play dirty in this new soil-themed board game
Scientists designed the free-to-play game ‘Dirty Matters’ to help us appreciate this overlooked substance.
Scientists who research soil by day and play board games at night designed a new activity they hope will make their jobs easier to explain to their family, and even more importantly, the world.
Tanvi Taparia, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen, studies how soil biology affects plant health and growth, which in turn affects how much food farmers can produce. She helped design a board game, wittily named Dirty Matters, that illustrates soil’s role in achieving food security, clean water, and carbon storage, three of United Nations sustainable development goals. The game is free and available to download for the public online. Interested players can print out the board game, cards, and characters.
Indigenous land rights help protect Brazil’s forests
Territories in Brazil’s fragmented Atlantic Forest where Indigenous peoples enjoy secure land rights have seen measurably less deforestation than similar areas in which land tenure is weak or non-existent, researchers reported Thursday.
The findings, published in the journal PNAS Nexus, are the first to quantify the benefits of enhanced Indigenous land rights for Brazil’s tropical rainforests, and add to a growing body of peer-reviewed literature highlighting more broadly the advantages of Indigenous stewardship.
Measuring the big old trees on federal land, and how much carbon they hold
The clock is ticking on President Biden’s executive order on old-growth forests: last April, he gave the Interior Department a year to complete an inventory of old-growth forests on federal land.
A couple of conservation groups got out ahead of the federal government. Woodwell Climate Research Center teamed up with Wild Heritage and the Natural Resources Defense Council for their own inventory, recently published in a science journal.
It measures the age(s) at which trees can be consider mature–it differs for species and location–and measures the carbon captured and sequestered by trees. We unpack the major findings in a visit with lead author Richard Birdsey from Woodwell, and Dominick DellaSala from Talent, the chief scientist at Wild Heritage.
Listen on Jefferson Public Radio.
Extreme weather and the jet stream
Weather records are now routinely getting shattered across the United States, with recent severe rainstorms in California, freezing temperatures in Texas, and a warm January thaw for the northeast. Jennifer Francis, Senior Scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, joins Host Steve Curwood to explain why a climate disrupted jet stream is behind much of this extreme weather.
Read more and listen on Living on Earth.
Natural weather weirdness boosted by climate change behind extreme start to 2023
In a world getting used to extreme weather, 2023 is starting out more bonkers than ever and meteorologists are saying it’s natural weather weirdness with a bit of help from human-caused climate change.
Much of what’s causing problems worldwide is coming out of a roiling Pacific Ocean, transported by a wavy jet stream, experts said.
Farming destroyed Brazil’s rain forests. It could also save them
In a field of bare red dirt in São Paulo state, Paula Costa is trying to turn back the clock. Five hundred years ago, this land was part of the Mata Atlantica, a dense, diverse rain forest that covered 15% of Brazil. Its trees stretched more than 2,000 miles along the eastern Atlantic coast, and far inland. But today 93% of the forest has been stripped of trees, with much of it turned over to monoculture farming. Costa, a 36-year-old biologist, bangs the ground with her fist: it’s hard, the dry soil degraded by the tropical sun.
Yet on this sweltering morning in March 2022, a few green shoots have forced their way through the surface. The rain forest is making a comeback. “These will be jack beans. These are millet. These are radishes,” she says, fingering them lovingly. “They’re going to bring the soil back to life.”