As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain future

As ocean oxygen levels dip, fish face an uncertain future

This story was originally published by Yale Environment 360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Off the coast of southeastern China, one particular fish species is booming: the oddly named Bombay duck, a long, slim fish with a distinctive, gaping jaw and a texture like jelly. When research ships trawl the seafloor off that coast, they now catch upwards of 440 pounds of the gelatinous fish per hour — a more than tenfold increase over a decade ago. “It’s monstrous,” says University of British Columbia fisheries researcher Daniel Pauly of the explosion in numbers. The reason for this mass invasion,…Source: Grist, a beacon in the smog,an independent news outlet and network of innovators working toward a planet that doesn’t burn and a future that doesn’t suck

Plastic bottles found to harm human health at every stage of their life cycle

In 1973, a DuPont engineer named Nathaniel Wyeth patented the PET plastic bottle — an innovative and durable alternative to glass. Since then, production has skyrocketed to more than half a trillion bottles per year, driven by beverage companies like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestlé. It’s no secret that most of these PET bottles, named for the polyethylene terephthalate plastic they’re made of, are never recycled. Many end up on beaches or in waterways, where they degrade into unsightly plastic shards and fragments that threaten marine life. But blighted beaches are only the tip of the iceberg. According to a new report from…Source: Grist, a beacon in the smog,an independent news outlet and network of innovators working toward a planet that doesn’t burn and a future that doesn’t suck

Two NASA Studies Find Lower Methane Emissions in Los Angeles Region

Two NASA Studies Find Lower Methane Emissions in Los Angeles Region

In Brief

Researchers found that emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas dropped for several years near the nation’s second-largest metropolitan area.

VISIONS: The EMIT Open Data Portal Two recent studies by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California used contrasting approaches to measure drops in human-caused emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane in recent years in the Los Angeles region. In the first study, published in February in Environmental Research Letters, scientists analyzed data from ground-based sensors scattered…Source: NASA’s Global Climate Change – Vital Signs of The Planet

A Global Biodiversity Crisis: How NASA Satellites Help Track Changes to Life on Earth

In Brief:

Climate change plays an increasing role in the global decline of biodiversity—the variety of life on Earth. Scientists use NASA data to track ecosystem changes and to develop tools for conserving life on land, in our ocean, and in freshwater ecosystems.

Many of us associate the sound of a singing bird with the beauty of nature. In recent years, though, fewer chirps, tweets, and birdsong have been heard. It isn’t because birds have stopped singing, but because there are fewer…Source: NASA’s Global Climate Change – Vital Signs of The Planet

Brazil keeps protecting Indigenous land in the Amazon. It’s not stopping deforestation.

Even with strict regulations, protected areas are losing forest to weakened environmental policies.Source: Grist, a beacon in the smog,an independent news outlet and network of innovators working toward a planet that doesn’t burn and a future that doesn’t suck…

Tracking the West's Growing Wildfires

Tracking the West’s Growing Wildfires

Across the western United States, climate change has caused temperatures to rise, droughts to drag on, and vegetation to go thirsty. As a result, wildfires are occurring more frequently and over a longer time period each year. This phenomenon was exemplified recently in the Washburn Wildfire, which burned through the Eastern Sierras in California, including Yosemite National Park, for over three weeks in July 2022. Roads closed around and inside the park, and access was cut off to the Mariposa…