Storm Éowyn a historic storm you missed
Ireland was caught unprepared for a monster storm that hit the island nation with 100 MPH winds, smashing infrastructure, bringing floods and, ironically, wrecking renewable energy installations. Hundreds of thousands were without power for days.
Mass Alaskan sea bird death by heat wave
A marine heat wave that occurred between 2014 and 2016 killed about 75% of the population of the common murre, a coastal seabird. This is the largest single species wildlife die-off in modern history.
According to the latest research, the numbers have yet to rebound. The study documented the devastating effect that marine heat waves have had on the population of these birds along the coast of Alaska.
The anomaly, known as “the blob,” persisted for two years, disrupting marine food webs. The impact became visible as more than 62,000 emaciated common murre carcasses washed ashore from California to Alaska – most washing up within the Gulf of Alaska.
Greenland lakes turning brown as environment warms
Record heat and rain turned thousands of Greenland lakes nasty brown in 2022 as they hit a tipping point and began emitting carbon dioxide.
Record heat and rain in 2022 pushed the lakes of West Greenland past a tipping point, according to a new study at the University of Maine. Heat waves turned snow into rain and thawed the island’s permafrost — frozen ground that stores carbon, iron and other elements. The rains then washed these elements into lakes, turning them brown.
Less sunlight was able to penetrate the lakes as they darkened, which had a ripple effect on the microscopic plankton living in the water. The number of plankton absorbing CO₂ through photosynthesis declined, while the amount of plankton breaking down and releasing carbon increased.
The lakes normally absorb CO₂ in the summer, but by the following year they had flipped to become carbon dioxide producers. These types of widespread changes would normally take centuries. Researchers have observed the browning of lakes across the Northern Hemisphere, including the U.S., but it typically takes multiple decades — much longer than the transformation of Greenland’s lakes.
“The magnitude of this and the rate of change were unprecedented,” study lead author Jasmine Saros, a professor of paleolimnology and lake ecology at the University of Maine, said in the statement.
