1.30.25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Radioized Diary of Science and Nature. Your reader's
Kelly Taylor. I'll have some articles related to a science
in nature, but first a reminder. RADIOI as a reading
service intended for people who are blind or have other
disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. From

(00:22):
BBC Science Focus magazine. The headline is two hundred and
thirty four new species discovered in Southeast Asia. A bumper
crop of extraordinary species living in the Greater Mekong region
of Southeast Asia was revealed in a new report published

(00:43):
by conservation organization the World Wide Fund for Nature in December.
The rich Wildlife Zone, which runs from me and Mar
to Vietnam, sees an average of one hundred and thirty
new species identified per year, but according to the report,
twenty twenty three saw a total of two hundred and

(01:05):
thirty four discovered by hundreds of scientists from around the world,
including one hundred seventy three plants, twenty six reptiles, seventeen amphibians,
fifteen fish, and three mammals. Among these are a ginger
root that smells like mango, a leafless orchid found in

(01:27):
a market, a high altitude crocodile, newt and a shrew
mole that weighs only eight grams and is now one
of the ten lightest land mammals on Earth. The report
warns that species in the Greater Leukon region are threatened
by habitat degradation, pollution, and invasive species, all threats exacerbated

(01:53):
by climate change. The researchers hope that the new species
will bring increased to tension to the area and spur
on conservation efforts. Although these species were just described by
science in twenty twenty three, they've been living in the
unique habitats of our region for many millennia, said doctor

(02:13):
Chris Hallum, the regional Wildlife lead. Quote, each of these
species is a critical piece of a functioning, healthy ecosystem
and a jewel in the region's rich natural heritage. Quote
now from Scientific American dated January fifteenth. How the polar

(02:38):
vortex can bring Arctic blasts to the United States. Winter
is supposed to be cold, and indeed, in the absence
of global warming, the season would be colder than it
typically has been in the US in recent years. Nevertheless,
when freezing temperatures and nipping winds team up for days
on end, it can be difficult not to wonder why

(02:58):
conditions must be quite so cold. But if you can
keep your brain thought enough to be curious, the answer
offers intriguing glimpses into the weather systems that govern our planet.
Thinking about how the central part of the country or
even the Gulf Coast states get cold air isn't just
thinking about what's happening locally, says Andrea Lopez Lang, an

(03:23):
atmospheric scientists at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. You have
to really zoom out and take a big picture perspective.
That big pictures perspective is centered on the Arctic and
driven by two atmospheric phenomena. The first is the polar
jet stream, a huge current of air that circles the

(03:45):
globe between fifty and sixty degrees north latitude within the
low altitude troposphere, the same layer of atmosphere where most
weather unfolds. North of the polar jet stream is colder air.
South of it is warmer air. When the polar jet
stream zips more or less evenly around the Arctic, the

(04:07):
continental US and other mid latitude locations remain relatively warm
because it keeps cold air trapped to the north, but
When the jet stream meanders, drifting south or north and
south as it circles the earth, teeth chattering air can
sneak farther south, causing local temperatures to drop sharply in

(04:29):
what sometimes known as an Arctic blast. The polar jet
stream exists year round and can cause winter cold snaps
on its own, but during the winter it is joined
by a second atmospheric phenomenon, dubbed the polar vortex. This
swirl of frigid air located more than ten miles above

(04:51):
Earth's surface, strengthens each year during the northern hemisphere's coldest months,
and even though polar vortex antics aren't involved in all
cold air outbursts, the two atmospheric phenomena can interact in
ways that cause particularly frigid spells. In normal conditions, the
polar vortex spins tightly over the Arctic, allowing the polar

(05:13):
jet stream, which blows by beneath and south of the
polar vortex, to remain fairly smooth. Quote If the polar
vortex is left alone, nothing's bothering it. It's a nice, fast,
quiet rotation, and the cold air is close to the
center of that rotation, says JUDEA. Cohen, climate scientists at

(05:35):
the Company Atmospheric and Environmental Research. But sometimes the polar
vortex gets messy, slowing or wandering or even breaking in two,
and that destabilized air mass can cause the polar jet
stream to develop particularly large meanders along its path, allowing
brutally cold weather to sneak farther south than usual. This

(05:59):
was a factor in Fabrsbruary twenty twenty one, for example,
when freezing temperatures in Texas lasted more than eight days,
causing widespread power outages and killing more than two hundred people.
Regardless of whether the polar vortex contributes to a specific
cold air outbreak or that event is the work of
the polar jet stream alone, these frigid spells are only

(06:21):
sometimes joined by winter precipitation. Quote, there's a lot of
ingredients that need to be in place to get a
really big snowstorm, Lopez Lang says. One of those factors
is cold, of course, but another is water vapor that's
available to freeze into snow. Intriguingly, the southern hemisphere is
also home to a polar vortex, but that system doesn't

(06:43):
undergo the disruptions that characterize the northern vortex. These events
never happen over the Antarctic, says Aditi Sheeshrati, atmospheric scientist
at Stanford, and the absence of these polar vortex disturbances
in the southern hemisphere, which has its own polar vortex
and polar jet stream, can point toward an explanation of

(07:04):
what's causing the phenomenon in the northern hemisphere. The South
Pole is located in the continent of Antarctica, surrounded by
the Southern Ocean. In contrast, in the North Arctic Sea,
in the North Arctic Sea, ice is surrounded by alternating
land and ocean North America, the Atlantic, Eurasia, the Pacific.

(07:29):
Earth's atmosphere behaves differently over land and ocean, creating large
scale atmospheric waves in the Northern Hemisphere that, when circumstances align,
have the power to upset the polar vortex, triggering more
extreme cold air outbreaks, just as it affects everything else
on Earth. Climate change is contributing to cold air outbreaks

(07:52):
in some clear ways and in some ways that scientists
are still working to understand. What certain researchers say is
that winters are becoming more mild and cold extremes are
becoming less common than they were in the middle of
the twentieth century. Models aren't clear on whether climate change
is making polar vortex disruptions more common. Cohen notes that

(08:15):
cold extremes have become more frequent since two thousand, when
the Arctic's warming rate picked up steam, and he believes
they are linked to the way melting ice is shaping
the atmosphere. Quote in this period of Arctic change, extreme
winter weather and severe winter weather have been surprisingly resilient,

(08:36):
he says. Now turn to Time magazine. The headline of
this article is our Burning World, and it's written by
Jeffrey Klueger. It's long been established that climate change turbocharges
wildfires with drought, persistent heat, lightning storms, and dried vegetation,

(09:02):
all contributing to out of control blazes. That's just one
reason of January report from the European Space Agency's Copernicus
Climate Change Service came as such bad news. According to
the release, twenty twenty four was the first year global
mean temperatures exceeded pre industrial levels by one point six

(09:27):
degrees celsius or two point eight eight degrees fahrenheit. That
blows past the benchmark established by the twenty fifteen Paris
Climate Accord, which sought to limit future warming to well
below two degrees celsius in the twenty first century, with
a preferred target of one point five degrees c. Doing

(09:49):
so would help limit the impact of a hotter planet.
In southern California, the report could be read by the
light of a burning city. On January v seventh, alone,
four wildfires fed by eighty mile per hour Santa Ana
winds roared across Los Angeles County, destroying thousands of homes,

(10:10):
en forcing tens of thousands to flee. But everywhere the
Earth is showing signs of heat swoon, with record high
levels of water vapor in the atmosphere, record low expanses
of sea ice around the poles, and record oceanic temperatures
in the North Atlantic, Indian, and Western Pacific oceans. July

(10:34):
twenty second, twenty twenty four, went into the books as
the hottest single day ever recorded worldwide, with the average
thermometer popping its top at a comparatively feverish seventeen point
one six degrees sea that's sixty two point eight degrees fahrenheit.
All of the global temperature data sets show that twenty

(10:56):
twenty four was the hottest year since records began in
eighteen fifty, says Carlo Bontempo, a Copernicus director, in a statement.
Wildfires across the Americas were not only a result of
climate change, but also a cause of future heat. Bolivia
and Venezuela released record levels of wildfire related carbon dioxide.

(11:22):
Also owing to fires, Canada reached its second highest annual output.
If there was any good news to be found in
the Copernicus report, it is that a single year that
exceeds pre industrial temperatures by one point five se is
not the end of the story. The Paris Agreement considers

(11:45):
the one point five sea threshold formally breached only if
that is the average temperature increase over a twenty year stretch.
There is still time for aggressive climate action to lower
emissions and bring temperature to heal in the process. Now,
as bon Tempo pointed out, humanity is in charge of

(12:07):
its own destiny. And now we'll turn to Smithsonian curiosity.
Rover spots ancient water ripples on Mars, hinting at a
past with shallow ice free lakes. This is January twenty eighth.

(12:29):
Wave ripples, the undulating lines in sandy shores that form
when the wind pushes shallow water back and forth, are
a common sight on Earth's lakes and beaches. Now, NASA's
Curiosity rover has identified two sets of ancient wave ripples
on Mars, suggesting the presence of standing bodies of liquid

(12:51):
water billions of years ago. Curiosity discovered the ripples in
Mars' Gale Crater region in twenty twenty two. We have
been searching for these features since the Opportunity and Spirit
Landers began their missions in two thousand and four. Co
author John Groetzinger, geologists at California Institute of Technology, says

(13:14):
in a statement, previous missions discovered ripples formed by water
flowing across the surface of ancient Mars, but it was
uncertain if that water ever pooled to form lakes or
shallow seas. Groetzinger continued. In twenty fourteen, Curiosity identified evidence
of long gone but long lived Martian lakes, and now

(13:37):
ten years later, Curiosity has discovered ancient lakes that were
free of ice, offering an important insight into the planet's
early climate. The body of water that created the ripples
must have been exposed to the wind, which is why
the scientists deduced it was not covered in ice. In fact,
solidified wave ripples are one of the most direct pieces

(14:00):
of geological evidence for ancient bodies of standing water. Curiosity
found that the ripples are about one point five to
one point nine inches apart and approximately a quarter of
an inch high. The team plugged these measurements into a
computer model, which used them to predict the presence of
an ancient lake less than about six and a half

(14:22):
feet deep. Both sets of ripples are approximately three point
seven billion years old, but one is slightly older than
the other. This suggests that atmospheric conditions allowed for the
formation of standing water more than once in the planet's history.
The study joins a host of previous research proposing that

(14:46):
though Mars lost most of its atmosphere around the same
time the ancient ripples formed, its bodies of water didn't
immediately vanish. We can start to see that Mars didn't
just have one wet peer period early in its history
and then dried out, says Edwin Kite, geophysicist at the
University of Chicago. It's more complicated than that there were

(15:09):
multiple wet periods. The longer water existed on Mars's surface,
the more opportunities potential life could have had to evolve
and inhabit the red world. The discovery of the water
ripples could influence future missions to Mars, suggests Eric Rawls
of Earth dot Com. In fact, another team of scientists

(15:30):
has recently investigated how water might have shaped Mars's mysterious
geology to inform an upcoming European Space Agency mission. Quote
the mounds in Chryst's Planetia a plane on Mars, are
rich in clay minerals, meaning liquid water must have been
present at the surface in large quantities nearly four billion

(15:53):
years ago, says Joe McNeil, planetary scientists at the Natural
History Museum in London. The European Space agencies upcoming Rosalind
Franklin rover will explore near by and could allow us
to answer whether Mars ever had an ocean, and if
it did, whether life could have existed there. Our next

(16:19):
article will come from Popular Science The Best Ways to
Stay Safe from the neuro virus aka the winter vomiting bug,
and this is January twenty ninth. The highly contagious neurovirus
popularly known as stomach flu or the winter vomiting bug,

(16:40):
is now surging through the United States. The number of
outbreaks is up significantly over previous years, possibly due in
part to a new strain of the virus. Outbreaks can
occur after direct contact with someone who is infected. Food
and household surfaces can also become contaminated. William Schaffner, pres

(17:02):
Professor of preventive medicine and Infectious Diseases at the Vanderbilt
University School of Medicine, discusses the symptoms of neurovirus, how
best to treat it, and the population's most vulnerable to
this illness. What are the symptoms of a neurovirus infection,
Schafner says. Neurovirus is an intestinal virus that can make

(17:27):
you very, very sick. It is indelicately called winter vomiting disease,
and it begins suddenly, often with an explosive vomit that
then repeats itself. Neurovirus can cause abdominal pain and diarrhea
at the same time, along with a fever. It will
probably make you feel miserable for two or three days,

(17:47):
but then everybody pretty much recovers. How should neurovirus be treated.
The major problem neurovirus causes is dehydration from all that
vomiting and diarrhea. So you have to say stay hydrated.
Do this with the little SIPs of clear liquids, because
you take too much, it'll come right back up. Sports

(18:07):
drinks are very good. Most people who get into trouble
are either very young or older and more frail. They
may have to go to the hospital to get rehydrated
with an iv When the occasional death occurs due to
this dehydrating infection, it's in those vulnerable populations. Why does

(18:27):
neurovirus tend to surge during the winter. You can get
it anytime of the year, but there is a seasonal
increase in the winter for reasons that scientists are not
quite sure of. But people spend a lot of time
indoors with each other in wintertime, so that makes it
easier for the virus to get from one place to another.
All that travel over the holidays, as well as family

(18:49):
gatherings and parties, can spread the virus. How can people
protect themselves from the virus. The most important thing is
good hand hygiene. Washing with soap and water works the
best Those hand hygiene gels and wipes. The hand sanitizers
that people tend to use aren't as effective against neurovirus,

(19:12):
so just wash frequently with good old soap and water,
and then of course avoid people who are sick. Also,
remember that the virus can survive on environmental surfaces like counters,
door knobs, and tables. You don't want to pick up
those viruses on your fingers. If you get a little
bit of virus on your fingertips and then touch your lips,
you can get an infection because it just takes a

(19:34):
small dose of the virus to make you sick. Who's
particularly vulnerable to neurovirus? The people who are more susceptible
to catching it are those living in semi enclosed or
enclosed populations, for example, people in nursing homes, schools, and prisons,

(19:54):
essentially any circumstance where people are together for a long
period of time. Another place where the virus can spread
is cruise ships, which is why neurovirus is also called
the cruise ship virus. When people are confined on a
ship for days and days, these outbreaks can run through
most of the passengers. Interestingly enough, and this has never

(20:15):
been well explained. The crew is usually less affected, but
again the most serious illness occurs in older, frail, and
immune compromised people or in the very young, where dehydration
can be more serious. Where's the research on developing a
neurovirus vaccine? Norovirus has presented some scientific challenges. It's actually

(20:38):
rather difficult to grow in the laboratory, so that has
delayed the development of a vaccine, but researchers are working
on it. Are there other infectious diseases going around right
now along with neurovirus? Respiratory viruses are still out there, influenza,
COVID nineteen and respiratories since virus or RSV. They're all

(21:03):
perking up at the same time. It looks as though
we're having a very brisk winter viral season. Now we'll
turn to Popular Mechanics for an article that's headlined one
of the most active volcanoes in the world is about
to blow. This is January twenty ninth. Some bullet points

(21:24):
at the beginning of the article read first, the Axial Seamount,
a volcano located three hundred miles off the coast of
Oregon and a mile underwater, is slowly showing signs of
an impending eruption. Second. Although less well known than other
volcanic giants of the Cascades, particularly Mount Saint Heleans, this

(21:44):
underwater volcano is actually the most active one in the
Pacific Northwest and third, with eruptions in nineteen ninety eight,
twenty eleven, and twenty fifteen. The volcano serves as a
perfect laboratory, and experts expecting eruption by the end of
twenty twenty five. The Pacific Ocean's Ring of Fire is
the most volcanically active area of our planet. Part of

(22:08):
that ring, though it's really more of a horseshoe, bisects
the Pacific Northwest via the Cascade Range, and it's here
that one of the most active volcanoes of the world
can be found. The honor goes to the Axial Seamount,
an underwater peak located some three hundred miles off Oregon's coast,
and scientists think it will erupt before the year is out.

(22:33):
Some volcanoes in the Cascades can go centuries without erupting,
but the Axial Seamount's frequency can be measured in just years.
In fact, the volcano is so active that it has
become the site of the world's first underwater volcano observatory,
the New Millennium Observatory NEMO, which monitors ongoing changes at

(22:56):
the Summits Caldera. While being meticulously monitored since nineteen ninety seven.
The volcano has undergone an eruption in nineteen ninety eight,
twenty eleven, and twenty fifteen, and it appears twenty twenty
five will soon be added to the list. Thankfully, The
Axial Seamount is different from the Northwest Southern volcanoes both

(23:18):
in frequency and severity. According to Science Alert, the shield
structure of the peak formed from thin lava, meaning that
any eruption will likely ooze out magma and form new seafloor.
This makes the threat of a possible tsunami extremely low.
The Axial Seamount is also not a part of the

(23:40):
Cascadia subduction Zone, which is the danger area in which
experts believe an earthquake ominously named the Big One will
one day strike. Instead, it rests on the one di
Fuca Ridge further west, and its impending eruption likely won't
have any impact on the seismic activity of these reduction

(24:00):
zone along Oregon's coast. Scientists at Oregon State University and
the University of North Carolina at Wilmington have actively studied
how magma moves within the axial system using bottom pressure recorders.
According to a report by OPB, every two years, scientists

(24:21):
put out these bottom pressure recorders, collect the old recorders,
and analyze the data. Bill Chadwick from OSU then uses
the data to try to forecast when the Axial Seamount
will erupt again. In summer of twenty twenty four, Chadwick
reported on his blog that the rate of inflation within
the Axial Seamount had been steadily increasing. An update in

(24:44):
October of twenty twenty four reported that the rate of inflation,
as well as surrounding seismicity, has stabilized. Quote an eruption
does not seem eminent, but it can't do this forever,
Chadwick concluded. He stated that an eruption at the u
the Axial Seamount between now and the end of twenty
twenty five was inevitable. Scientists hope that by continuously monitoring

(25:08):
the Axial Seamount, they can learn more about other volcanoes
around the world. Luckily, the Pacific Northwest's most active volcano
provides the perfect scientific laboratory. Now an article from Science
Alert the ocean's surface is warming over four hundred percent

(25:30):
faster than in the nineteen eighties. This is from January
twenty nine. The unexpected jump in global temperatures since twenty
twenty three has helped fuel a relentless assault of associated
disasters around the world, including the still burning La fires
and the deadly Valencia floods, leaving researchers scrambling for explanations.

(25:53):
Data from the world's oceans now reveal that an alarming
acceleration in sea surface warming will likely contributed. A new
study from the University of Reading in the UK finds
the tops of our oceans are warming more than four
times faster than in the late nineteen eighties. Several theories
have been suggested for the excess heat beyond what was

(26:15):
expected from the El Nino and known rates of increasing
CO two. Theories include an increase in heat trapping water
vapor from the twenty twenty two eruption of Honga Tonga
Hunga Hapai, a decrease in surface cooling aerosols from shipping
regulations they were changed in twenty twenty, and peak activity

(26:37):
in the current solar cycle, sending more heat our way,
but even combined, these couldn't fully account for observed temperatures,
so meteorologists Chris Merchant and colleagues used satellite data records
since nineteen eighty five to calculate the change in the
rate of sea surface warming. They found the underlying rate

(26:58):
of warming was about point zero six degrees c back
in the eighties, but it's now increasing too, point to
seven degrees c per decade. The team notes this is
not a linear increase, but an accelerating one. The team
warns that if this trend continues in only the next
twenty years, we will exceed the sea surface temperature rise

(27:20):
we've experienced in the last forty years. Quote this leaves
unanswered the important question of what has caused the Earth
energy imbalanced trend. They write, with all that excess energy
already to decimating wildlife in mass, leaving millions hungry from
destroyed crops, and exacerbating diseases and other health conditions, it's

(27:44):
hard to fathom how much worse this will rapidly get.
Policymakers in wider society should be aware that the rate
of global warming over recent decades is a poor guide
to the faster change that is likely over the decades
to come, underscoring the urgency of deep reductions in fossil

(28:05):
fuel burning, says Merchant and his colleagues in a paper.
Concerned scientists have been laying out plan after plan to
try and steer our sinking living biosphere back towards safety.
We've known for decades what needs to be done, yet
subsidized fossil fuel industries continue to exacerbate the situation. Well,

(28:30):
that's it for today's Diary of Science and Nature. Your
reader was Kelly Taylor. Now stay tuned for the Health
Corner on RADIOI