Warming Trends: Tracking Bird Migrations in the Night Sky, plus the Olympic Mountains Rapidly Shrinking G glaciers and a Podcast focusing on Florida’s Polluted Environment

SCIENCE

A Plume of Birds Surrounds a City Near You

The United States is rapidly ramping up its spring bird migration. Nearly 2 million birds flew over Harris County, Texas, Houston’s home, on Thursday night. About 270,000 birds flew over Cook County, Illinois, the home of Chicago. Denver, Colorado was home to approximately 90,000 birds.

Birds migrate at night so avid birders won’t be able to see the plume from airborne travelers as they make their way north to breed.

However, a new tool shows how important nightly movement really is. The migration dashboardCreated by Cornell Lab of Ornithology with several partners, this radar data collection from weather stations is used to count the number of birds that passed through every county in the U.S.A. Each morning, the numbers are updated for the night before.

You can see how many birds are in flight, what direction and speed they’re moving, the altitude they’re flying, said Andrew Farnsworth, a senior research associate at the Cornell lab. It’s a game changer when it comes to thinking about how to tell people about all sorts of measures of migration and just what the magnitudes are at a much more local scale than we’ve ever been able to do.

Farnsworth explained that hyper-local data became available this spring due to recent advances in machine intelligence and cloud computing. 

He hopes that this tool will get more people excited about biannual migrations, possibly encouraging more people adopt bird-friendly behavior like turning off disorienting lights during peak migration. He added that scientists can use the tool to explore migration patterns over time and space, especially as they change with warming climates. 

How do birds adapt to climate change? How can they adapt to climate change? How can they keep up with the rapid changes? Farnsworth stated. There’s some real fundamental information there that’s good to understand for science.

SCIENCE

A Double Whammy of Melting for the Olympic Mountain Glaciers 

As the climate warms, more than 250 glaciers currently cover the Olympic Mountains in west Washington State. new research shows. The glaciers in Olympic National Park have already lost more that half of their volume since 2000. The bulk of the loss occurred over the past 40 years. 

Researchers from British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington used historical images, satellite photos, and climate models to evaluate the past, present, and future of the West’s glaciers. These vital water reserves in the West help to prevent drought. 

Normally, glaciers melt in the summer, when temperatures are warm, and then grow in the winter, when snow accumulates. This keeps the enormous rivers of frozen water relatively stable over time. Researchers found that climate change will not only lead to faster melting, but also cause more snow and rain in winter, which will not help glaciers grow. 

For the Olympics then, it’s kind of a double whammy, that it’s not getting as nourished in the wintertime and it’s increasing losses in the summer during the melt, said study lead author Andrew Fountain, a geology and geography professor at Portland State University. The glaciers are rapidly eroding.

The threat of climate change is threatening glaciers all over the globe, but the Olympic glaciers are more vulnerable than others because they are located at a lower elevation than other glaciers like those in Mount Rainier National Park southwest of Seattle. 

Fountain stated that the only real way to slow down melt is to reduce greenhouse gas emission on a global level. 

What’s happening to the glaciers in the Olympics is the same thing that’s going to be happening elsewhere in the U.S., and it’s certainly happening to glaciers globally, he said. Sure, this is a study of one small part of the glacial regime, but it’s emblematic of what’s happening elsewhere.

CULTURE

A Podcast on Floridas Self-Inflicted Wound, aka Its Environment

A boat captain and surfer are among the guests in a new podcast that examines Florida’s vulnerable environment. 

Interview-style weekly show called The Nature of FloridaOscar Corral, journalist and filmmaker, engages in conversation with each guest to discuss the state’s natural resources under threat and what can be done about it.

Corral was recently interviewed by Inside Climate News about the podcast. This conversation was lightly edited to increase clarity and length.

Your experience was mainly in documentary film. Why did you decide on a podcast?

After I’ve launched a documentary, I noticed that after about a year, the buzz starts to die off, and it starts to lose its momentum a little bit. And so I thought, well, what’s the best way to maintain the momentum of environmental awareness and letting people know what’s happening environmentally? I decided that the best way was to start an environmental podcast. There’s nothing like that in Florida as far as I can tell. There’s a couple that talk about wildlife here and there and minor things, but environmental issues, like topical, current issues and the political issues behind them, there’s nothing else like that. So that’s what I did. 

Why is Florida such an interesting place to discuss environmental issues?

There’s a lot of problems in Florida, as there are in many places, but in Florida, it’s really, really striking because Florida is known for its beaches and springs. But many times in the last decade, you’ve seen the complete uninhabitability, you can’t even use some of the waters in Florida, because they’re so polluted from blue-green algae or from nutrients. So it’s something thats vividly visible. It smells bad, it looks bad, you can’t swim in it. And then it negatively affects the state’s largest industry, which is tourism. And so for Florida, environmental issues, they’re like this self-inflicted wound for their primary economic driver. It’s really frustrating. So, the podcast attempts to discuss these issues and explain why they are not being addressed.

Is your podcast going to climate change? 

Yes, climate change is definitely a theme that we’re exploring in several of our interviews, because Florida is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Were a low-lying state, and we’re vulnerable to sea level rise. And in fact, we’re already seeing the effects of it in parts of Florida, including some of our most popular tourist destinations, like Miami Beach. Climate change is a part and parcel of this.

SOLUTIONS

Helping companies log their carbon emissions

Kristian Rnn, who was a former model of the effects of climate change at Oxford University, realized that emitters had to start counting their greenhouse gasses if they wanted to make a difference in carbon emissions.

Rnn said that the dominant narrative still holds that consumers can fix climate change. That’s essentially a narrative invented by Big Oil to shift the blame onto consumers. But at the end of the day, it’s corporations that need to decarbonize.

Rnn decided to leave academia and start a new life. NormativeCarbon accounting company, which helps corporations log their emissions and advises them on ways to reduce their carbon footprint. 

Normative’s latest offering is its carbon glossary,A collection of terms commonly used in the carbon accounting universe to aid companies navigate the maze of jargon Rnn spoke of when addressing emissions. The glossary includes terms such as greenwashing, carbon sequestration and offsetting.

Rnn said that increased stockholder demand and new U.S. laws are driving more companies into carbon accounting services. 

Whenever we talk to a client that doesn’t know the latest, then we can always bring the glossary up, he said. You can also use the tool to engage with companies and spread the gospel of net zero if you wish.