NASA Begins Study Of Australia's Great Barrier Reef

NASA

The Gulfstream III carrying NASA's PRISM instrument being readied for science flights from Cairns, Australia. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/BIOS.

A NASA airborne mission designed to transform our understanding of Earth's valuable and ecologically sensitive coral reefs has set up shop in Australia for a two-month investigation of the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest reef ecosystem.
At a media briefing today at Cairns Airport in North Queensland, Australia, scientists from NASA's COral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL) mission and their Australian collaborators discussed the mission's objectives and the new insights they expect to glean into the present condition of the Great Barrier Reef and the function of reef systems worldwide.
"CORAL offers the clearest, most extensive picture to date of the condition of a large portion of the world's coral reefs," said CORAL Principal Investigator Eric Hochberg of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS), Ferry Reach, St. George's, Bermuda, prior to the briefing. "This new understanding of reef condition and function will allow scientists to better predict the future of this global ecosystem and provide policymakers with better information for decisions regarding resource management."

Bleached and stressed coral on the Great Barrier Reef. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/BIOS.

CORAL's three-year mission combines aerial surveys using state-of-the-art airborne imaging spectrometer technology developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, with in-water validation activities. The mission will provide critical data and new models for analyzing reef ecosystems from a new perspective. CORAL will generate a uniform data set for a large sample of reefs across the Pacific Ocean. Scientists can use these data to search for trends between coral reef condition and the natural and human-produced biological and environmental factors that affect reefs.
Over the next year, CORAL will survey portions of the Great Barrier Reef, along with reef systems in the main Hawaiian Islands, the Mariana Islands and Palau.
In Australia, CORAL will survey six discrete sections across the length of the Great Barrier Reef, from the Capricorn-Bunker Group in the south to Torres Strait in the north. Two locations on the reef — one north (Lizard Island Research Station) and one south (Heron Island Research Station) — will serve as bases for in-water validation activities. Scientists from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the University of Queensland in Brisbane are collaborating with NASA and BIOS to conduct additional complementary in-water validation activities.

The Great Barrier Reef: Australia's national treasure
Located in the Coral Sea off Queensland, the Great Barrier Reef encompasses more than 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands. It is more than 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers) long and covers an area of about 133,000 square miles (344,400 square kilometers). The largest single structure made by living organisms on Earth, the reef teems with biodiversity, including about 400 species of coral. It attracts about 2 million visitors a year; in turn, tourism and fishing generate billions annually and employ tens of thousands of people. However, the reef faces environmental pressures from various human and climate change impacts.
"The Great Barrier Reef is Australia's national treasure, so having a broader understanding of its condition and what's threatening it will help us better understand how we can protect it," said Tim Malthus, research leader of CSIRO's Coastal Monitoring, Modeling and Informatics Group in Canberra, Australia. "Along with surveying several large sections of the reef, CORAL will also survey the health of corals in the Torres Strait, a complex high-tide area that has been historically less studied. It is also opportunistic for us to see if the reef is recovering after the recent bleaching event."
Stuart Phinn, professor of geography at the University of Queensland (UQ), said CORAL will provide Australian coral reef science and management with unique new maps and mapping approaches. These will expand ongoing efforts to map and understand Great Barrier Reef dynamics. "Being able to support and collaborate on NASA's CORAL project will enable groups like ours to advance our capabilities and transfer them to Australian science and management agencies," Phinn said. "Part of this includes building a process for mapping the entire reef. UQ and CORAL will exchange field data, knowledge and experience to cross-validate mapping and monitoring approaches."

An urgent need for better data
Around the world, concerns among scientists, resource managers and the public that coral reef ecosystems are degrading at alarming rates due to human-induced factors and global change have motivated increased assessment and monitoring efforts. The urgency of the problem has forced estimates of global reef status to be synthesized from a variety of local surveys with disparate aims, methods and quality.
The problem with current assessments of reef degradation, said Hochberg, is that the data supporting these predictions are not uniform and surprisingly sparse. "Virtually all reef assessments to date rely on in-water survey techniques that are laborious, expensive and limited in spatial scope," he said. "Very little of Earth's reef area has been directly surveyed. More importantly, there are no existing models that quantitatively relate reef conditions to the full range of biological and environmental factors that affect them -- models that can help scientists better understand how coral reefs will respond to expected environmental changes. CORAL addresses an urgent need in the face of ongoing worldwide reef degradation, and also serves as a pathfinder for a future satellite mission to globally survey the world's reefs."
Natural, balanced coral reefs comprise mosaics of coral, algae and sand on the seafloor that, together, drive the structure and function of reef ecosystems. When corals die, algae rapidly take over their skeletons. A non-stressed, healthy reef will usually increase coral coverage as it recovers from disturbance. But when a stressed reef is disturbed, the carbonate structure of its coral erodes, and the reef ultimately becomes a flat-bottom community dominated by algae, shifting rubble and sand, with little to no coral recovery. Such ecosystem phase shifts, as they are called, represent a radical change in a reef's character, marked by a decline in the diversity of reef flora and fauna.
CORAL will generate scientific data products describing coral reef condition, measuring three key components of reef health for which we currently have limited data: composition, primary productivity and calcification. Primary productivity is a measure of how much energy is available to drive biological activity in a reef system. Calcification measures the net gain in carbonates, which determine a reef's long-term growth.

PRISM: Shining new light on coral reef condition
To accomplish its science objectives, CORAL will use JPL's Portable Remote Imaging Spectrometer (PRISM). PRISM will literally peer through the ocean's surface to generate high-resolution images of reflected light in the specific regions of the electromagnetic spectrum important to coral reef scientists. Mounted in the belly of a modified Tempus Solutions Gulfstream IV aircraft, PRISM will survey reefs from an altitude of 28,000 feet (8,500 meters) to generate calibrated scientific data products.
"PRISM builds on an extensive legacy of JPL spectrometers that have successfully operated for NASA and non-NASA missions," said Michelle Gierach, NASA CORAL project scientist at JPL. "It provides the coral reef science community with high-quality oceanographic imagery at the accuracy, range, resolution, signal-to-noise ratio, sensitivity and uniformity needed to answer key questions about coral reef condition. PRISM data will be analyzed against data for 10 key biological and environmental factors affecting coral reef ecosystems, acquired from pre-existing data sources."
NASA collects data from space, air, land and sea to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing.

Links

• NASA science flights study effect of summer melt on Greenland Ice Sheet
• NASA analysis finds August 2016 another record month
• Big coastal cities sink faster than seas rise
• 10 interesting things about ecosystems

U.S. Defence Experts And Military Officers Sound Alarm About Climate Change

Ottawa Citizen - David Pugliese

U.S. teachers are not teaching their students enough about climate change, new study shows. Jonathan Hayward / AP

Climate change is increasing the risk of international conflict and putting U.S. national security at risk, warns a coalition of 25 retired officers and Democrat and Republican security experts.
“There are few easy answers, but one thing is clear: the current trajectory of climatic change presents a strategically-significant risk to U.S. national security, and inaction is not a viable option,” said a statement signed by the security advisors and published by the Center for Climate and Security in Washington.
The advisors include retired General Anthony Zinni, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, retired Admiral Samuel Locklear, head of the U.S. Pacific Command until last year, Geoffrey Kemp, President Ronald Reagan’s national security advisor, Dov Zakheim, George W. Bush’s Under-Secretary of Defense and Army Chief of Staff General Gordon Sullivan who served under U.S. President Bill Clinton.
The advisors are calling on the next U.S. president to create a cabinet-level position to deal with climate change-related security issues.
Another report, from another panel of retired officers, warned that extreme weather is threatening U.S. coastlines and military installations.
“The complex relationship between sea level rise, storm surge and global readiness and responsiveness must be explored down to the operational level, across the Services and Joint forces, and up to a strategic level as well,” the report noted.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that Arctic sea ice this summer shrank to its second lowest level since scientists started to monitor it by satellite. Scientists say this is another ominous signal of global warming.
Here is the rest of the Associated Press article:

The National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado said the sea ice reached its summer low point on Saturday, extending 1.6 million square miles (4.14 million square kilometers). That’s behind only the mark set in 2012, 1.31 million square miles (3.39 million square kilometers).
Center director Mark Serreze said this year’s level technically was 3,800 square miles (10,000 square kilometers) less than 2007, but that’s so close the two years are essentially tied.
Even though this year didn’t set a record, “we have reinforced the overall downward trend. There is no evidence of recovery here,” Serreze said.
“We’ve always known that the Arctic is going to be the early warning system for climate change. What we’ve seen this year is reinforcing that.”
This year’s minimum level is nearly 1 million square miles (2.56 million square kilometers) smaller than the 1979 to 2000 average. That’s the size of Alaska and Texas combined.
“It’s a tremendous loss that we’re looking at here,” Serreze said.
It was an unusual year for sea ice in the Arctic, Serreze said.
In the winter, levels were among their lowest ever for the cold season, but then there were more storms than usual over the Arctic during the summer. Those storms normally keep the Arctic cloudy and cooler, but that didn’t keep the sea ice from melting this year, he said.
“Summer weather patterns don’t matter as much as they used to, so we’re kind of entering a new regime,” Serreze said.
Serreze said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Arctic was essentially ice free in the summer by 2030, something that will affect international security.
“The trend is clear and ominous,” National Center for Atmospheric Research senior scientist Kevin Trenberth said in an email. “This is indeed why the polar bear is a poster child for human-induced climate change, but the effects are not just in the Arctic.”
One recent theory divides climate scientists: Melting sea ice in the Arctic may change the jet stream and weather further south, especially in winter.
“What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic,” Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann said.
“It looks increasingly likely that the dramatic decrease in Arctic sea ice is impacting weather in mid-latitudes and may be at least partly responsible for the more dramatic, persistent and damaging weather anomalies we’ve seen so many of in recent years.”

Links

• Bipartisan Groups of Military and Security Leaders Urge New Course on Climate
• Climate Security Consensus Project Statement
• Climate and Security Advisory Group: Briefing Book for a New Administration
• Military Expert Panel Report: Sea Level Rise and the U.S. Military’s Mission

Summer 2016 Has Seen Some Of The Scariest Observable Effects Of Climate Change Yet

NewsMic - Max Plenke

Image Credit: AP

In 1848, two ships — the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus — sank while trying to navigate through the Northwest Passage. It was brutal: a 900-mile-long sea route punctuated with heavy sea ice that connects the northern Atlantic and Pacific oceans through an arctic maze. Neither ship made it. All 129 men on the expedition died. Last month, the Crystal Serenity, a 14-deck, 820-foot cruise ship, sailed from Anchorage, Alaska to New York City using that same pass, but without the icy obstacles. What was formerly the perilous end of a crew of British Royal Navy sailors is now, for the first time ever, a luxury cruise route.  And it couldn't have happened if a rapidly warming planet hadn't melted away the danger. That's good news for the people who own cruise ships, or have the $30,000 to $156,000 necessary to book passage on such cruise ships — but it's terrible news for the rest of us. In the last few months, we've witnessed record-breaking temperatures, extreme flooding and an unprecedented mammalian extinction. And unfortunately, that doesn't indicate an anomalous summer. It means we're witnessing the tangible and quantifiable results of global warming. We reached out to an earth scientist, a biologist and a geologist who agreed that over the past three months the effects of climate change have accelerated, and they've left their mark in three notable ways.

Climate change claimed its first mammalian species

A now-extinct Bramble Cay melomys Source: Wikimedia

A June report from researchers at an Australian government environmental group deduced that the Bramble Cay melomys, a tiny rodent found exclusively on an island in the Great Barrier Reef, hadn't been detected since 2009. After an exhaustive search of an island that, during high tide, was only 6.2 acres — down from 9.8 acres in 1998 — the researchers officially declared the species extinct. They pegged "dramatic habitat loss" due to "human-induced climate change" as the cause, marking the first time a mammal died off due to climate change.
Mark Urban, an associate professor from the University of Connecticut's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, said he was shaken when he heard about the report. "The first thing that came to my head was, 'It's happening. This is what we predicted and now we're seeing it occur,'" he said in a phone interview Tuesday. "It's not great news, but maybe this is exactly ... what we need to understand the immediacy of the risk."

"The first thing that came to my head was 'It's happening. This is what we predicted and now we're seeing it occur."

Last year, Urban published a study titled "Accelerating extinction risk from climate change," which looked at over 130 separate studies to figure out what kind of threat the warming planet poses to different species. His findings were what one might expect: Small species living on small islands, like the melomys, or on "sky islands," like the tops of mountains, were at greatest risk of extinction since they probably couldn't survive relocation. It spells disaster for a slew of other small mammals like the American pika, a mountain rock bunny that lives in the Sierra mountains. 

The American Pika Source: Shana S. Weber/AP

If changes aren't made to slow the progress of climate change, said Urban, one in six species will be at risk of going extinct. "The surprise here is the accelerated risk ... if we just keep doing what we're doing," he said. "It's critical we don't get there."

Arctic sea ice levels are now the lowest they've ever been

Melting Arctic sea ice Source: DOMINIQUE FAGET/Getty Images

In August, scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center released evidence that sea ice levels in the Arctic are extremely low compared to what they were 10 years ago. "Now, we're kind of used to these low levels of sea ice," NASA sea ice scientist Walt Meier said in a press release released by the agency. "It's the new normal." While species extinction and rampant flooding are the things we can witness with our own eyes, the scariest things are happening somewhere few of us will ever go — but are having an impact all of us can feel all the same. Melting sea ice is the effect that, as the planet warms up, the ice at the top of the planet melts. This isn't news; we've been hearing about the melting polar ice caps for years. But it's gotten so bad that scientists are saying it's entirely changed the ecosystem up north. "We're seeing the greening of the arctic," Charles Miller, principal investigator for the Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a phone interview Tuesday. "Because of climate change effects at these latitudes, we're seeing increase in plant growth." Through the course of his team's research in Alaska, Miller has seen temperatures reach absurdly high levels. Last July, the town of Deadhorse, Alaska, set the all-time record high temperature for a town on the Arctic Ocean: 85 degrees Fahrenheit. "That part of the world should be frozen most of the year," Miller said.

A pipeline forced to shutdown in Deadhorse, Alaska Source: Al Grillo/AP

When the northernmost parts of the planet start to emulate beach weather, bigger problems arise, like the melting of permafrost, a usually reliable layer of always-frozen ground. "Permafrost can be harder than concrete — you need special machinery to get through it," Miller said. When the permafrost melts, that infrastructure, which has been solidly frozen for tens of thousands of years, collapses. Land elevation drops. And construction, whether that's pipelines, buildings or entire communities, is compromised. Because of that phenomenon, the village of Kivalina, Alaska, is practically being devoured by northern waters as its permafrost base thaws beneath it, the sea level inching closer to residents' doorsteps. "They regularly do aerial fly-overs because of the permafrost failure," Miller said. "They're worried the village will literally erode into the water."

The village of Kivalina, Alaska Source: Andrew Harnik/AP

The failure of permafrost isn't the only problem with a warming arctic. According to Miller, there are 1,500 billion metric tons of organic carbon frozen in the arctic soil — enough that, as it thaws out, the arctic region could turn into the carbon-emission equivalent of a continent-sized exhaust pipe. "It's possible the carbon could become mobilized," Miller said. "With the same amount of greenhouse gases we've seen with fossil fuels like coal and oil, there might be natural feedback from permafrost that contributes tens of billions of tons of carbon over the coming centuries." If tens of billions of tons of organic carbon are released from the frost, it could all end up in the atmosphere — becoming a gigantic and unstoppable source of greenhouse gases.

Climate change has turned extreme flooding into a regular occurrence

Flooding in Louisiana left thousands of people displaced Source: Max Becherer/AP

In mid-July, 13 people died when roughly two feet of water pummeled southern Louisiana. A storm like that should, statistically, only have an annual exceedance probability of less than 0.2% — meaning it should only happen once every 500 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The storm was, instead, the eighth of its kind in about 12 months, the latest in a string of storms in Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia and Maryland.
Storms in general are getting stronger and more frequent, according to Beth Christensen, Director of Adelphi University's Environmental Studies Program. Higher storm frequency doesn't necessarily mean your town's going to flood — unless the air is full of moisture. Unfortunately, in New Orleans, it was.

A 2015 flood took over roads and parks in Houston, Texas Source: Eric Kayne/Getty Images

"We are in record territory," the National Weather Service said in a statement, after an agency-launched weather balloon recorded astronomical levels of atmospheric moisture. According to Christensen, there's a strong correlation between higher global temperatures and more intense rain. When you have high heat, you get more evaporation from bodies of water. When you have more evaporation, you have more moisture in the atmosphere, meaning more humidity — or air full of water vapor. So when the storm falls, according to NOAA, that water vapor turns the rain fat and heavy. "Add this tendency to flood to the higher sea levels resulting from, one, increased melting of ice in the high latitudes, and two, volumetric increases associated with the warmer water, and we can expect more of these events, not fewer, in the future," Christensen said. Heavy flooding doesn't only knock out power and beat up homes. It hit India's tea crops hard, decreasing production by 7.22% in July, according to the Economic Times. Recently, floods in Jamaica ruined up to $8 million in coffee beans set for export. And in August, flash floods in China destroyed several vineyards, resulting in an "overnight loss" of about 4 million yuan, or around $600,000.  "We can document that these events are anthropogenic," she said, meaning derived from manmade environmental pollution. "This is our new reality."

A solar power project in the United Arab Emirates Source: Kamran Jebreili/AP

So is the planet past salvation?
Even though there's an "every little bit helps" mentality when it comes to fighting against increased carbon emissions, we're in larger initiative territory if we're going to save the planet: taking cues from countries like Costa Rica, which didn't burn a single fossil fuel to power its electrical grid for two months; converting the U.S.' own power grid to a more efficient, computer-controlled, "smart" technology; and following through on the Paris Agreement, the legally-binding agreement signed by more than 170 countries in April, pledging actions to restrict the planet's temperature rise to under 3.6-degrees Farenheit, widely considered the danger zone. It wouldn't be easy, fast or cheap. But if the last year is any indication, we can no longer afford to be armchair observers in a rapidly changing global event.
"We need to search for alternatives to carbon-based energy systems like fossil fuels," Miller said. "It's having a noticeable impact on the Earth as an entire system." "It's not enough to think these things are localized," he concluded. "Every action we take has a global impact."

Links

• As Republicans Deny Climate Change, the UN Says it Could Cost the World $2 Trillion 
• It's Hard to Argue With Climate Change When You See Over 100 Years of Data at Once
• The Earth's Axis Is Tilting Thanks to Climate Change, NASA Scientists Say
• Doctors Warn Climate Change Will Have "Devastating Effect" on Human Health