Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

Goodbye, El Niño, and hello, La Niña

Anonymous — Fri, 24 May 2024 18:36:15 +0000

Goodbye, El Niño, and hello, La Niña Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 05/24/2024 - 12:36

Pedro DiNezio

La Niña is coming, raising the chances of a dangerous Atlantic hurricane season–an atmospheric scientist explains this climate phenomenon

One of the big contributors to the record-breaking global temperatures over the past year—El Niño—is nearly gone, and its opposite, La Niña, is on the way.

Whether that’s a relief or not depends in part on where you live. Above-normal temperatures are still forecast across the U.S. in summer 2024. And if you live along the U.S. Atlantic or Gulf coasts, La Niña can contribute to the worst possible combination of climate conditions for fueling hurricanes.

Pedro DiNezio, a University of Colorado Boulder associate professor of atmospheric and ocean sciences who studies El Niño and La Niña, explains why and what’s ahead.

Pedro DiNezio is a University of Colorado Boulder associate professor of atmospheric and ocean sciences who studies El Niño and La Niña.

What is La Niña?

La Niña and El Niño are the two extremes of a recurring climate pattern that can affect weather around the world.

Forecasters know La Niña has arrived when temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean along the equator west of South America cool by at least half a degree Celsius (0.9 Fahrenheit) below normal. During El Niño, the same region warms instead.

Those temperature fluctuations might seem small, but they can affect the atmosphere in ways that ripple across the planet.

The tropics have an atmospheric circulation pattern called the Walker Circulation, named after Sir Gilbert Walker, an English physicist in the early 20th century. The Walker Circulation is basically giant loops of air rising and descending in different parts of the tropics.

Normally, air rises over the Amazon and Indonesia because moisture from the tropical forests makes the air more buoyant there, and it comes down in East Africa and the eastern Pacific. During La Niña, those loops intensify, generating stormier conditions where they rise and drier conditions where they descend. During El Niño, ocean heat in the eastern Pacific instead shifts those loops, so the eastern Pacific gets stormier.

EL Niño and La Niña also affect the jet stream, a strong current of air that blows from west to east across the U.S. and other mid-latitude regions.

During El Niño, the jet stream tends to push storms toward the subtropics, making these typically dry areas wetter. Conversely, mid-latitude regions that normally would get the storms become drier because storms shift away.

This year, forecasters expect a fast transition to La Niña – likely by late summer. After a strong El Niño, like the world saw in late 2023 and early 2024, conditions tend to swing fairly quickly to La Niña. How long it will stick around is an open question. This cycle tends to swing from extreme to extreme every three to seven years on average, but while El Niños tend to be short-lived, La Niñas can last two years or longer.

How does La Niña affect hurricanes?

Temperatures in the tropical Pacific also control wind shear over large parts of the Atlantic Ocean.

Wind shear is a difference in wind speeds at different heights or direction. Hurricanes have a harder time holding their column structure during strong wind shear because stronger winds higher up push the column apart.

La Niña produces less wind shear, removing a brake on hurricanes. That’s not good news for people living in hurricane-prone regions like Florida. In 2020, during the last La Niña, the Atlantic saw a record 30 tropical storms and 14 hurricanes, and 2021 had 21 tropical storms and seven hurricanes.

Forecasters are already warning that this year’s Atlantic storm season could rival 2021, due in large part to La Niña. The tropical Atlantic has also been exceptionally warm, with sea surface temperature-breaking records for over a year. That warmth affects the atmosphere, causing more atmospheric motion over the Atlantic, fueling hurricanes.

During La Niña, the Walker Circulation intensifies, triggering stronger storms where the air rises. (Graphic: Fiona Martin/NOAA Climate.gov)

Does La Niña mean drought returns to the US Southwest?

The U.S. Southwest’s water supplies will probably be OK for the first year of La Niña because of all the rain over the past winter. But the second year tends to become problematic. A third year, as the region saw in 2022, can lead to severe water shortages.

Drier conditions also fuel more extreme fire seasons in the West, particularly in the fall, when the winds pick up.

What happens in the Southern Hemisphere during La Niña?

The impacts of El Niño and La Niña are almost a mirror image in the Southern Hemisphere.

Chile and Argentina tend to get drought during La Niña, while the same phase leads to more rain in the Amazon. Australia had severe flooding during the last La Niña. La Niña also favors the Indian monsoon, meaning above-average rainfall. The effects aren’t immediate, however. In South Asia, for example, the changes tend to show up a few months after La Niña has officially appeared.

La Niña is quite bad for eastern Africa, where vulnerable communities are already in a long-term drought.

Is climate change affecting La Niña’s impact?

El Niño and La Niña are now happening on top of the effects of global warming. That can exacerbate temperatures, as the world saw in 2023, and precipitation can go off the charts.

Since summer 2023, the world has had 10 straight months of record-breaking global temperatures. A lot of that warmth is coming from the oceans, which are still at record-high temperatures.

La Niña should cool things a bit, but greenhouse gas emissions that drive global warming are still rising in the background. So while fluctuations between El Niño and La Niña can cause short-term temperature swings, the overall trend is toward a warming world.

Pedro DiNezio is an associate professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

La Niña is coming, raising the chances of a dangerous Atlantic hurricane season—an atmospheric scientist explains this climate phenomenon.

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Student undertakes global DIY climate action

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 21:23:00 +0000

Student undertakes global DIY climate action Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 11/17/2023 - 14:23

Clay Bonnyman Evans

CU Boulder senior Runzhe Li will attend major U.N. climate conference as independent scholar

Runzhe Li left his native Beijing for the University of Colorado Boulder in part because of his interest in nature.

In major cities around the world, people can “go to a national park, far off site, and it was more like travel,” says the senior, who is majoring in economics with a minor in atmospheric and oceanic sciences (ATOC).

“Here (in Boulder), we have such a good environment, with the nearby mountains and wildlife, the environmentally sensitive urban design and public policies worth learning from. By the way, Boulder is heaven for outdoor people.”

While he knew he wanted to study economics, he also was drawn by CU Boulder’s long-standing reputation in the natural sciences.

Runzhe Li, a CU Boulder senior studying economics, will attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference, known as COP28, as an independent scholar.

“Having a hard-science background is important for environmental and economic research,” he says.

But it wasn’t until he visited the upper Amazon region in the past summer and witnessed firsthand Peru’s contrast between the natural environment and economic development that he realized he wanted to focus specifically on the intersection of climate science and economics.

“I took a four-hour boat ride into the primary jungle, and stayed there for half a month,” says Lee, as his American friends usually call him.

“I saw astounding starry skies and incredible wildlife, but it was hard to ignore the current state of limited economic development in that region of Peru. How to protect the environment while safeguarding the right to development is an area I hope to explore in the future.”

Now, Lee will attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference, aka COP28, as an independent scholar, from Nov. 30 through Dec. 12 in the United Arab Emirates.

“I am honored to attend such an important conference as a CU ATOC student, but I value the opportunity to interact with people around the world who care about climate issues in various fields—politicians, academics, multinational companies and organizations and the media. We know there are a lot of disagreements today, so we need to get to know what they are and know what the various stakeholders are thinking,” he says.

“I believe a balance can be created between the economy and the climate.”

The conference is being described as “a milestone moment when the world will take stock of its progress on the Paris Agreement,” the 2015 agreement within the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change addressing greenhouse-gas emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance. COP28 will “help align the efforts on climate action, including measures that need to be put in place to bridge the gaps in progress,” according to the United Nations.

Lee plans to visit a friend in the UAE, one of the world’s largest oil producing countries, before returning to Boulder.

“It’s the engine of the world, very important for industrial economics,” he says. “I grew up in China and then went to school in the U.S.—the largest demand side of the energy market. Now I want to go to the supply side and see how their business and society works.”

Once he’s back in Boulder, Lee will speak to students in an introductory course on climate change at the invitation of ATOC Associate Professor Jennifer Kay.

“I hope the information I bring back and my personal passion will help those freshmen students understand why we need (ATOC), and why we all need a stronger science background, and not just ideology,” Lee says.

“The timing is ideal for students (in the) introductory class. We focus the last two weeks of the semester on climate policy and solutions. I’m so inspired by our students,” says Kay, speaking of Lee.

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CU Boulder senior Runzhe Li will attend major U.N. climate conference as independent scholar.

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From molecule movement to coastal flooding, CU scientists push boundaries

Anonymous — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 17:49:32 +0000

From molecule movement to coastal flooding, CU scientists push boundaries Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/27/2023 - 11:49

Rachel Sauer

Researchers Andrés Montoya-Castillo and Julia Moriarty are named U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Researchers, receiving multiyear funding

Two University of Colorado Boulder researchers have been selected as U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Research Program scientists, a designation intended to support the next generation of U.S. STEM leaders.

Andrés Montoya-Castillo, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, and Julia Moriarty, an assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and a fellow in the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, are among 93 early-career scientists from across the United States whose research spans astrophysics and artificial intelligence to fusion-energy and quantum materials. The 93 scientists will share in $135 million in research funding for projects of up to five years.

“Supporting America’s scientists and researchers early in their careers will ensure the United States remains at the forefront of scientific discovery,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm states in the awards announcement. “The funding … gives the recipients the resources to find the answers to some of the most complex questions as they establish themselves as experts in their fields.”

Understanding how molecules dance

Montoya-Castillo’s research is guided, in part, by the need to know which molecules are “going to be good candidates for some technological adventure,” he says. “We need to know how that molecule interacts with light.”

Researcher Andrés Montoya-Castillo studies molecular movement to better understand how they absorb energy.

One of the biggest challenges to understanding molecules is the fact that they don’t stop moving. Far from the static picture on a textbook page, molecules “are always dancing, always jiggling about,” Montoya-Castillo says. “When they jiggle about, sometimes photons or little particles of light that they wouldn’t have been able to absorb, now they can. Or the opposite could be true: They can’t absorb particles we thought they could, because they’re jiggling about, or can’t do it as well.”

Knowing how molecules in liquids and solids absorb light has the potential to support the development of everything from more efficient solar cells to organic semiconductors and biological dyes. But knowing molecules means knowing how they dance, a longtime roadblock in designing materials that maximize energy conversion, say, or enhance quantum computing.

So, Montoya-Castillo and his research group will attack this problem with statistics. “One of deepest aspects of theoretical chemistry is saying, ‘OK, we have a random-looking process. What kind of statistics does this random process follow?” he says. “We’re looking to bridge the randomness to establish a fully predictive simulation.”

The researchers will initially apply their techniques to porphyrins, which are molecules prevalent everywhere on Earth and involved in everything from oxygen transport to energy transfer; they cause the red in blood and the green in plants. Montoya-Castillo notes that porphyrins are ideal for testing the techniques because they are highly tunable and are critical ingredients in natural and artificial energy conversion.

“One of the questions we’re asking is, ‘How do we arrive at design principles to make the next generation of photo catalysts or energy conversion devices, the next generation of quantum computing or quantum sensing?’” he says.

“To do this, we need to achieve two things. The first is realize when our wonderful theories and models are not sufficient to predict and explain the physics that one gets from experiment and generalize our approach. We are doing that by developing the theoretical framework required to predict the spectra of molecules whose constant jiggling makes it difficult to know when they will absorb photons.

“The second is to exploit the current models when they work to give us insight. And fast. To tackle this second challenge, we’re working on being able to exploit experimental data to parameterize the model automatically and use this as a starting point to predict how molecules interact with light. Then we’ll be able to match our predictions to experiment, refine the model and our understanding, and speed up feedback loop of theory-experiment-design, which has traditionally been a very computationally complex and expensive procedure.

He adds that, “One of the final things we’re doing is developing a machine-learning framework to reduce this huge computational cost so we can really accelerate the pathway to tweaking these molecules to get some technological advances going for us.”

Climate change and coastal flooding

For Moriarty, a coast oceanographer by training, the path to her DOE-supported research began with a practical observation: As storms become slower and wetter because of climate change, they are dumping a lot more rain on coastal areas. Couple that with sea level rise caused by climate change, and coastal urban centers are increasingly at risk for floods.

Julia Moriarity, a CU Boulder researcher, uses process-based and statistical machine-learning modeling to understand how flooding affects coastal areas.

“When urban areas flood, you can have sewage systems flood, water-treatment plants flood, nuclear power plants flood, because all these facilities have to be located near water,” Moriarty says. “So, the question is: when a flood causes polluted water to enter the local waterways, what’s that polluted water’s fate?”

Not only can floods contaminate local waterways by spreading bacterial or even radioactive contaminants into them, but they can unleash a cascade of events in which excess nutrient levels can stimulate harmful algae blooms, reduce oxygen levels in the water and reduce water clarity and quality, sometimes leading to “dead zones.”

Moriarty’s research combines process-based and statistical machine-learning modeling to analyze how floods of coastal infrastructure affect pollutant and nutrient fluxes in local waterways, and their impact on biogeochemical processes. A significant aim is to better understand how extreme floods degrade water quality and which aspects of flooding are predictable and which are not.

“If something’s predictable, it’s a lot easier to plan for it,” Moriarty says.

The research will use Baltimore, Maryland, as a case study, in collaboration with the Baltimore Social-Environmental Collaborative (BSEC) Urban Integrated Field Laboratory. Using data from the Energy Exascale Earth System Model climate model, as well as a new Baltimore hydrodynamic-biogeochemistry model, Moriarty and her research team aim to better understand how coastal urban flooding impacts local waterway biogeochemistry in different climate scenarios.

Further, the researchers want to use a combination of machine learning and sensitivity tests of the process-based model they develop to scale up what they learn from local observations in Baltimore to coastal-urban systems worldwide.

“The better we can understand and predict these events, the better we can plan for them,” Moriarty says. “It costs a lot less to mitigate risks in advance of events than to clean them up afterward.”

Top image: Glenn Asakawa/CU Boulder

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Researchers Andrés Montoya-Castillo and Julia Moriarty are named U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Researchers, receiving multiyear funding.

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Large or small, nuclear war would wreak havoc on the ocean

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:54:11 +0000

Large or small, nuclear war would wreak havoc on the ocean Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/31/2023 - 18:54

Sarah Kuta

Study finds that the ocean could never fully recover if a nuclear war were to break out

Scientists have a good idea of what would happen after a nuclear war on land: Soot would fill the atmosphere and block the sun, leading to worldwide crop failures and famine. But, until recently, they’ve understood less about how nuclear weapon detonation would affect the oceans, which cover more than 70% of the Earth’s surface.

A recent study in the journal AGU Advances helps fill in the gaps: Nuclear war would wreak havoc on the world’s oceans, causing them to cool rapidly and become choked with sea ice. Ocean marine life would die out, and marine ecosystems would take decades—possibly even longer—to recover.

“This research suggests that the consequences of nuclear conflict can be quite dire,” says Nicole Lovenduski, one of the paper’s authors and a University of Colorado Boulder associate professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC) and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR).

Top of page: A mushroom-shaped cloud and water column rise above Bikini Atoll from the underwater Baker nuclear explosion of July 25, 1946. Radioactive sea spray caused extensive contamination. Photo by Bill Gustafson. Above: Nicole Lovenduski's research focusses on marine carbon cycle, ocean climate variability and change and ocean modeling.

“Because the ocean moves slowly, when you change or perturb the ocean, it takes a long time to recover back to its initial state. The ocean would be affected for decades to hundreds or thousands of years, depending on the process. And in our experiments, it really never recovered,” she says.

There are about 13,000 total nuclear weapons around the world under the control of nine nations. While a few thousand weapons are waiting to be dismantled, the United States and Russia each have roughly 4,000 deployed or spare weapons—90 percent of all active nuclear weapons—while other countries have much smaller arsenals.

India and Pakistan each have 150; China, Britain and France have roughly 200 each; Israel has 100; and North Korea has an unknown number, according to Brian Toon, one of the paper’s authors and a professor at ATOC and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).

To understand what might happen to the oceans after nuclear detonation, scientists ran a series of simulations that modeled major nuclear conflicts, such as what could occur between the United States and Russia, as well as smaller wars, such as those between nations like India and Pakistan.

No matter the location or magnitude of the war, the researchers found that soot would quickly clog the stratosphere, preventing sunlight from reaching the oceans’ surface for roughly a decade.

“Once soot gets up there, there are very few natural processes by which it can leave, so it hangs out there for a while,” Lovenduski says. “It gets mixed all around and forms a cloud of soot around the Earth, which leads to a cooling of the climate system.”

After a nuclear war between the United States and Russia, they project that global average surface temperatures at sea and on land would decline by 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) in the three years after the conflict, triggering what researchers have called a nuclear winter.

Ocean temperatures would also drop dramatically, creating a new “ocean state for the lifetime of many organisms, including humans” long after the conflict ends, the researchers write. The colder temperatures would allow sea ice to proliferate, which would block shipping routes and major ports.

We find an extension of sea ice even in a simulation of what you might consider a regional or smaller nuclear conflict. Even a small conflict can have large consequences for the climate system.”

“We find an extension of sea ice even in a simulation of what you might consider a regional or smaller nuclear conflict,” Lovenduski says. “Even a small conflict can have large consequences for the climate system.”

The sunlight-blocking soot cloud would also make it difficult, if not impossible, for phytoplankton to photosynthesize and stay alive. Since phytoplankton, also known as microalgae, form the basis of the marine food chain; their demise would set in motion a chain reaction that would likely devastate fish and other marine wildlife populations.

On land, scientists predict that nuclear conflict would lead to disastrous crop failures. And if the world’s population had hoped to replace those crops by turning to the oceans for food, they likely wouldn’t find much to eat there, either.

“If the algae go, everything else goes, too,” Lovenduski says. “The ocean essentially starves as a result of these nuclear conflicts.”

Other takeaways

Scientists from a dozen institutions around the world collaborated on this project. And although they began their work long before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the timing of the paper’s publication amid the heightened threat of nuclear war has generated increased interest in their work.

“Certainly, our study came out at a time when a lot of people are thinking more about the threat of nuclear conflict than they have in the recent past, so it’s very timely, unfortunately,” Lovenduski says. “The fact that our project is becoming more relevant is depressing and terrifying.”

The scientists hope their nuclear war projections never become reality, but, in the meantime, they’re using this line of research as an opportunity to learn more about the ripple effects of other potentially damaging events. For instance, what would happen after a massive volcanic eruption, which would also send sunlight-blocking materials and chemicals into the stratosphere?

The findings are also helpful for considering one proposed solution to climate change: Artificial cooling of the planet.

There’s a lot of talk about geoengineering the climate because we made it warmer, so why don’t we fix it by making it cooler? Some of those geoengineering solutions are in line with this kind of simulation, where you loft aerosols into the stratosphere to cool the planet. This gives us an understanding of how the Earth system might respond to these types of manmade cooling events.”

“There’s a lot of talk about geoengineering the climate because we made it warmer, so why don’t we fix it by making it cooler?” she says. “Some of those geoengineering solutions are in line with this kind of simulation, where you loft aerosols into the stratosphere to cool the planet. This gives us an understanding of how the Earth system might respond to these types of manmade cooling events.”

They also hope their paper raises awareness among the general population that any nuclear conflict, even a relatively small one, could have calamitous worldwide consequences.

“Even if there is a small, regional nuclear conflict far away from you, you can also be affected,” she says. “People are coming to realize how interconnected our global society is, especially after the pandemic, and even a small conflict that occurs on one day can have huge implications for the entire Earth system for centuries to come.”

Study finds that the ocean could never fully recover if a nuclear war were to break out.

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Rosy-finches are Colorado’s high-alpine specialists, and researchers want to know why

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Jan 2023 22:07:39 +0000

Rosy-finches are Colorado’s high-alpine specialists, and researchers want to know why Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/19/2023 - 15:07

Sarah Kuta

Birds that can live at 14,000 feet and also breed at sea level might have evolved more quickly than previously thought

Mountaineers who venture high into the Colorado Rockies have likely spotted medium-sized, brown-and-pink birds rummaging around on snow patches for insects and seeds. These high-elevation specialists are rosy-finches, a type of bird that’s evolved to survive in some of the most rugged places in North America.

Researchers are now beginning to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding these unique birds, including the genetic underpinnings that allow them to survive at elevations of up to 14,000 feet and help determine the colors of their feathers.

Painting of rosy-finches, by Liz Clayton Fuller.

Their findings suggest that the three recognized North American species of rosy-finches—the gray-crowned rosy-finch, the black rosy-finch and the brown-capped rosy-finch—may have evolved within the last 250,000 years, which is a relatively short period in evolutionary terms.

Scientists shared more details from their work in a new paper recently published in the journal Evolution.

“These results are adding to the way we think about population divergence and speciation,” said lead author Erik Funk, who recently earned his doctorate in evolutionary biology from the University of Colorado Boulder and now works as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance.

Understanding biodiversity

Even before Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution by natural selection in 1859, scientists had long pondered the Earth’s rich biodiversity. How and why are there so many different types of life on the planet? It’s a question they still haven’t fully answered but, thanks to recent advancements in genetic sequencing, researchers now have new tools for probing deeper.

At top of the page: Erik Funk with a rosy-finch. Above: Scott Taylor, principal investigator (l), and Erik Funk.

As a backpacker and climber, Funk has spent a lot of time in the mountains of Colorado and California, where he often observed rosy-finches flitting around. But although they often inhabit and breed in high-elevation regions in the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, they also breed at sea level, such as along the Alaskan coast and among the Aleutian and Pribilof islands.

In addition to these breeding habit differences, the birds have varying feather colors and patterns. Some have brown body feathers, while others have black. Some have a gray patch on the crowns of their heads or on their cheeks, while others do not.

Funk wondered if analyzing the birds’ genomes could help explain some of these differences.

“We wanted to understand: Can we identify genetic regions that are responsible for generating the plumage color differences that exist in rosy-finches?” he said. “And there’s also this question about the elevational differences. Do the birds that live in Colorado possess some unique genetic differences that allow them to live at high elevations that the birds that live at sea level don’t have?”

Using blood and tissue samples from the University of Alaska Museum of the North, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and a 2018 field study, Funk created a whole genome dataset that encompassed the full geographic range and all the varying observable characteristics of North American rosy-finches. After analyzing the data, he identified unique genomic regions—and, possibly, specific genes—that are probably playing a role in the birds’ trait differences.

For instance, he found genetic differences between birds with and without gray cheek patches in a region of the genome that influences melanin pigments, which give color to feathers, hair, skin and eyes. Comparing birds that breed at high elevations with those that breed at low elevations, he found genetic differences in a region that contains genes that play a role in a cell’s ability to operate at different oxygen levels.

The genes he linked with traits are all located in distinct regions of the birds’ genome, which means that, over time, they can be reshuffled to form new trait combinations. This supports the theory that different rosy-finch populations likely evolved over a relatively short period of time.

Generally, we think of speciation as taking a long time—But if all of this variation exists within rosy-finches already, and the genome is able to recombine these different genes to produce new trait combinations, it could potentially happen a lot faster.

“Generally, we think of speciation as taking a long time—on the order of millions of years,” Funk said. “But if all of this variation exists within rosy-finches already, and the genome is able to recombine these different genes to produce new trait combinations, it could potentially happen a lot faster. It’s a cool way to think about how different traits or trait combinations might be able to evolve and could have implications on the rate at which populations diverge and new species are generated.”

More knowledge, more effective conservation efforts

Overall, the findings add to scientists’ understanding of biodiversity. But beyond that, they may also help inform conservation decisions in the face of human-caused climate change.

Brown-capped rosy-finches, which live primarily in Colorado, are experiencing population declines and, as such, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has identified them as a species of greatest conservation need.

To help stabilize or grow the birds’ numbers, scientists and conservationists want to know as much about them as possible—and even genetic knowledge could be helpful.

“Understanding what led to the rapid generation of these different phenotypes, how they are related and the genetic variations that underlie them, allows us to better understand how rapidly evolution can generate differences,” said study co-author Scott Taylor, a CU Boulder associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and the director of the Mountain Research Station.

“And maybe understanding that will help us better understand how these populations might respond to population collapses or changing environments into the future.”

Birds that can live at 14,000 feet and also breed at sea level might have evolved more quickly than previously thought.

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Research & Innovation Office names newest Faculty Fellow cohort

Anonymous — Fri, 09 Dec 2022 18:13:09 +0000

Research & Innovation Office names newest Faculty Fellow cohort Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 12/09/2022 - 11:13

The Research and Innovation Office has announced the 2023 RIO Faculty Fellows cohort, which includes 17 faculty members from departments and research institutes spanning the campus.

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Human-caused global warming, natural climate variability in vicious cycle

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Dec 2022 15:59:28 +0000

Human-caused global warming, natural climate variability in vicious cycle Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 12/02/2022 - 08:59

Sarah Kuta

Scientists show how the two factors combined to cause extreme ocean events in Indonesia

Extreme weather and ocean events are on the rise around the world, due largely to human-caused climate change. But to fully understand these changes—and, ideally, to predict when and where they may occur in the future—researchers and policymakers must also take into account naturally occurring climate variability, suggests new research published in Nature Communications and led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

Around the world, sea levels have risen by an average of 8 to 9 inches since 1880 because of human-caused global warming. But the amount of sea level rise varies greatly from region to region; it also changes over time, such as during high tide and low tide or storm surges.

Beyond that, sea level also fluctuates because of year-to-year and decade-to-decade climate variations, such as El Niño. All of these different layers can make it challenging for scientists to understand the primary cause of sea level changes in specific places at specific times.

At the top of the page: Floods that cuts the Raya Bintara Rd. in Jawa Barat, Indonesia on Jan. 1, 2020 (Fikri RA/Wikimedia Commons). Above: Weiqing Han, a professor in ATOC, is the lead author of this new research.

While analyzing data from along the Indian Ocean coast of Indonesia, scientists noticed an uptick in sea level height extremes, or periods of high sea levels, from 2010 to 2017. These events can cause flooding, erosion, saltwater contamination of water supplies and other serious issues for people living along the coast.

The sea level height extremes sometimes occurred simultaneously with marine heatwaves, or periods of abnormally high ocean temperatures, the researchers found.

Marine heatwaves can harm ocean ecosystems, leading to consequences like massive coral bleaching and fish migration or die-offs. This, in turn, affects individuals and businesses that rely on fish for their food and livelihoods, as well as healthy reefs for protection against storm surges. Marine heatwaves can also cause heavy rainfall, which can worsen flooding caused by sea level height extremes.

When they occur together, sea level height extremes and marine heatwaves can have more severe socio-economic and ecological impacts on coastal communities, so scientists were keen to understand why there has been an increase in sea level height extremes and co-occurring marine heatwaves in coastal Indonesia.

“While it is important to study sea level extremes and marine heatwaves individually, studying them together is scientifically important and societally relevant, since the potential damage from these compound events can be exponentially higher than when they occur separately,” said lead author Weiqing Han, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at CU Boulder.

To unravel the forces at play from 2010 to 2017, researchers studied tide gauge and satellite data and conducted a series of modeling experiments. Though human-caused climate change was partly to blame, natural climate variability—which occurs regardless of human influence—also played a role, the researchers concluded.

During this specific eight-year period, human-caused climate change and natural climate variability reinforced each other, leading to increased sea level height extremes. During other periods, however, natural climate variability may counteract human-caused climate change, which could help minimize sea level rise.

Understanding the complex relationship between the two forces, then, is essential for making accurate future projections of extreme events, which, in turn, affects plans for long-term coastal development and management. This is especially important for developing countries, which may lack the resources to mitigate or respond to extreme events, making their residents even more vulnerable.

“The study points out the importance of improving the representations of natural climate variability modes in our state-of-the-art climate models, in addition to more accurately representing the (human-caused) warming effects,” said Han.

Though past research has focused on marine heatwaves and sea level height extremes over a few days or weeks, this is one of the first studies to explore those events in the context of major climate variations—like El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole, or Indian Niño—which can last for many months or longer.

“We wanted to weave all these threads of research together in a case study for Indonesia, which is ground zero for the combined effects of El Niño and the Indian Ocean Dipole, and where we would expect the combined hazards of marine heatwaves and high sea levels to be pronounced,” said study co-author Michael McPhaden, a senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The good news is that while we are part of the problem, we can also be part of the solution.

Global temperatures will likely continue to rise—and extreme weather and ocean events will likely continue to occur more frequently and with greater intensity—unless governments take steps to halt human-caused climate change, researchers say, noting that such steps include reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and limiting deforestation.

Wealthier, developed nations will likely need to make the biggest changes, the researchers also argue. Though countries like the United States and China are responsible for huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, developing nations like Indonesia, which emit far lower amounts of greenhouse gases, often bear the brunt of climate change’s effects.

“The bottom line is that climate change is real, dangerous and costly, especially for those who are least responsible for creating the situation we find ourselves in,” said McPhaden.

“The good news is that while we are part of the problem, we can also be part of the solution.”

Other authors on the paper include Lei Zhang, Yuanlong Li and Wen Xing at the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Gerald A. Meehl, Aixue Hu, Nan Rosenbloom and Gary Strand at the National Center for Atmospheric Research; Shoichiro Kido and Tomoki Tozuka at the Japan Agency for Marine‐Earth Science and Technology; Anny Cazenave at Laboratoire d’Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales; and B. Jason West at NASA.

Scientists show how the two factors combined to cause extreme ocean events in Indonesia.

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Cross-campus open house will feature interdisciplinary climate change research, kick off U.N. Summit events

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Nov 2022 22:51:46 +0000

Cross-campus open house will feature interdisciplinary climate change research, kick off U.N. Summit events Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 11/10/2022 - 15:51

The College of Engineering and Applied Science, the College of Arts and Sciences and the Leeds School of Business are teaming up to highlight CU Boulder-led research to address climate change from 3-5 p.m. on Nov. 30 in the Olson Atrium of the Rustandy Building.

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CU Boulder researchers stoke a passion for science in tomorrow’s scholars

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Aug 2022 16:16:26 +0000

CU Boulder researchers stoke a passion for science in tomorrow’s scholars Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/16/2022 - 10:16

Doug McPherson

Undergrad students from minority-serving institutions get hands-on research experience and mentoring from faculty and grad students

Eight students from minority-serving institutions got two months of hands-on research experience with faculty and graduate students at the University of Colorado Boulder this summer, thanks to a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC).

Julie K. Lundquist, associate professor in ATOC and fellow in CU Boulder’s Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, said the experience, which ran from May 26 through July 29, aimed to create “a meaningful, supportive, and inclusive research community” where students learn what it means to be a scientist by conducting research in atmospheric, oceanic and cryospheric science.

“The ATOC REU provides research and educational opportunities for undergraduate students historically excluded from STEM (science, technology, engineering and math),” Lundquist said. “Professional scientists—faculty and graduate students—serve as mentors who help students develop crucial skills like computer programming, data analysis and scientific communication so the REU students can envision possible careers as professional scientists."

At the top of the page: ATOC 2022 REU students, grad students and Sara Sanchez join Vaisala's Chris Vagasky to learn about career options in atmospheric science and launch a weather balloon from Vaisala's offices in Louisville, Colorado (photo by Chris Vagasky). Above: ATOC 2022 REU students celebrate after their culminating poster presentations (photo by Brianna Undzis).

One of those students, Rebecca Torres, a senior at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley studying environmental science, said she hopes to attend law school or graduate school to become a “middleman between the scientific world and the governmental policy making world.”

She said she enjoyed meeting people from different walks of life. “I'm from a very closed-off bubble in Texas, but with this program I was able to get close to so many people I would have never gotten the chance to meet back home,” Torres said. “And it was comforting to know that no matter what educational background I come from, a science-related career is possible if I want it.”

Another student, Sarah Womantree, a senior at Metropolitan State University of Denver studying meteorology, said her mentors were helpful and eager to answer her questions. “They helped me at every step of the way in my research. They shed light on topics I didn’t understand or was curious about, which only fueled my curiosity and interest into more complex topics and research questions.”

Womantree, whose research project explored wind speeds in mountainous areas, said the REU helped her explore career options that she didn’t think were possible:

“I didn’t know you could get paid to go to graduate school, and I didn’t realize how many jobs were available in renewable energy and the private sector of atmospheric science. I learned so much, and it was definitely the highlight of my undergraduate academic career. I can’t wait to use my new data analysis and visualization skills to help understand weather and climate data in the future.”

ATOC Assistant Professor Sara Sanchez said that in addition to the research projects, the REU includes professional development seminars in applying for graduate school and industry jobs, preparing resumes, and creating LinkedIn pages.

“We emphasize providing the students with multiple mentors and in helping them develop an identity as a scientist,” Sanchez said.

With this program I was able to get close to so many people I would have never gotten the chance to meet back home. ... And it was comforting to know that no matter what educational background I come from, a science-related career is possible if I want it."

The National Science Foundation (NSF) REU program is designed to give undergraduate students intensive research opportunities related to a theme. This summer there were at least three REU programs at CU Boulder—including this one.

This was ATOC’s second REU program, and the program will continue for at least three more years.

The department’s Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity Committee decided in the summer of 2020 to create a REU, and ATOC held its first REU in 2021 virtually with 17 students funded by a mix of support from the NSF, NASA, the U.S. Department of Interior and CU Boulder’s Graduate School Diversity Recruitment Grant. Lundquist said the success of the first REU helped ATOC “make a compelling case to NSF” for funding for the summers of 2023-25.

A new NSF grant, awarded this August and worth $525,000, will fund those three summer programs, supporting 12 REU students each summer.

Lundquist called the ATOC REU “a great community effort” that involves nearly the entire ATOC department.

“Most of our graduate students are involved one way or another in mentoring the REU students, designing or teaching the two-week python bootcamp that opens the program, teaching the REU students how to give presentations or a scientific writeup, leading a social outing, or helping debug code,” Lundquist said.

“Faculty served as mentors or joined panel discussions about working in science. Our staff has been incredible about supporting the students, too. Expanding the scientific community requires all hands on deck.”

Undergrad students from minority-serving institutions get hands-on research experience and mentoring from faculty and grad students.

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Unlocking the secrets of the East Antarctic ice sheet

Anonymous — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 18:27:17 +0000

Unlocking the secrets of the East Antarctic ice sheet Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/11/2022 - 12:27

Sarah Kuta

Climate change may soon cause the sleepy giant to evolve, new research finds

Climate researchers are gravely concerned about the state of the Greenland ice sheet and the West Antarctic ice sheet, which have collectively lost billions of tons of ice over the last three decades because of atmospheric warming and warm ocean currents. That ice loss, in turn, has contributed to rising sea levels.

But they’ve generally paid less attention to the East Antarctic ice sheet, the largest ice sheet—and the world’s largest reservoir of freshwater—because past work has suggested that it’s less vulnerable to climate change than the other two and may be growing, not shrinking. If it were to completely melt, this behemoth structure, which is 10 times larger than the West Antarctic ice sheet, would cause global sea levels to rise by 52 meters (about 170 feet).

Now, though, there are signs that the East Antarctic ice sheet may be more susceptible to climate change than previously thought, according to an international team of scientists, including one from the University of Colorado Boulder. Their findings of the understudied ice sheet are out today in the journal Nature.

At the top of the page: Vanderford Glacier reflection (Jones). Above: A location map of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (Guy Paxman).

“There’s a huge amount of interest from funding agencies, from governments, from the media in Greenland and West Antarctica—and for very good reasons,” says Jan Lenaerts, a CU Boulder assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC) and one of the study’s co-authors.

“They’re changing. They’re dramatic. They’re discharging all this water and ice into the ocean, and it looks phenomenal and scary—and it is scary. But then there’s this third elephant in the room, this huge big brother, just waiting to be discovered.”

Scientists do predict that, in the short term, the East Antarctic ice sheet will likely remain stable because increased snowfall will offset any mass loss (in the form of melting snow and ice, as well as icebergs calving off into the ocean) caused by global warming. By 2100, they predict the East Antarctic ice sheet could contribute about 2 centimeters (0.79 inches) to sea level, which is much less than projections for the Greenland or West Antarctic ice sheets.

“The ice sheet will, to a large degree, stay as it is—namely a sleepy, but not sleeping, giant where things might change but not in a very dramatic fashion,” says Lenaerts. “We will keep the East Antarctic ice sheet dormant, and we will have to focus on the other two ice sheets.”

But in the longer term—beyond the year 2100—the future of the East Antarctic ice sheet will largely depend on global greenhouse gas emissions and temperature trends.

“The fate of the East Antarctic ice sheet remains very much in our hands,” says Chris Stokes, a professor of geography, sea level, ice and climate at the United Kingdom’s Durham University and the study’s lead author.

If global temperatures rise more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels—the upper limit set by the Paris Agreement on climate change—the East Antarctic ice sheet could contribute as much as one to three meters (3 to 10 feet) to global sea levels by 2300, and two to five meters (6.5 to 16 feet) by 2500.

But if temperature increases stay below 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, then the ice sheet could avoid the worst effects of global warming. Under that scenario, the ice sheet would contribute less than half a meter to sea level rise by 2500, according to the researchers.

“If we exceed that temperature boundary, we might initiate processes that are irreversible,” Lenaerts says.

To reach these conclusions, the scientists analyzed projections from numerical model simulations, as well as historical data and current observations. And though the study was a good first step toward forecasting the future of the East Antarctic ice sheet, they say it also highlighted gaps in our knowledge and research efforts in this region.

Mount Brown south ice core camp, Princess Elizabeth Land, East Antarctica (N. Abram).

“There’s definitely more work needed to synthesize the data and improve the modeling,” says Lenaerts. “The envelope of uncertainty, the spectrum of the models going into the future, is as wide as it can get. I don’t think there’s any place on Earth that has as much uncertainty of the future of climate change and its impacts than East Antarctica.”

Still, they hope the paper will help bring much-needed attention to the East Antarctic ice sheet, whether in the form of increased research funding, greater emphasis among climate researchers or more general interest from governments and members of the public.

Researchers still have a lot of unanswered questions about the mammoth structure and, as the climate continues to change, they need all the data they can get to make accurate predictions about the fate of the planet.

“It’s disappointing how little we know about a huge part of our climate system,” says Lenaerts. “It speaks to my imagination, at least, that there’s this huge ice sheet—the biggest reservoir of freshwater on Earth—and we don’t really talk about it as much because it’s not changing as much. But that doesn’t mean it’s not important.”

Climate change may soon cause the sleepy giant to evolve, new research finds.

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