This story was originally published by Yale Environment 360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

In August of 2021, rain fell atop the 10,551-foot summit of the Greenland ice cap, triggering an epic meltdown and a more-than-2,000-foot retreat of the snowline. The unprecedented event reminded Joel Harper, a University of Montana glaciologist who works on the Greenland ice sheet, of a strange anomaly in his data, one that suggested that in 2008 it might have rained much later in the season — in the fall, when the region is typically in deep freeze and dark for almost 24 hours a day.

When Harper and his colleagues closely examined the measurements they’d collected from sensors on the ice sheet those many years ago, they were astonished. Not only had it rained, but it had rained for four days as the air temperature rose by 30 degrees C (54 degrees F), close to and above the freezing point. It had warmed the summit’s firn layer — snow that is in transition to becoming ice — by between 11 and 42 degrees F (6 and 23 degrees C). The rainwater and surface melt that followed penetrated the firn by as much as 20 feet before refreezing, creating a barrier that would alter the flow of meltwater the following year.

All that rain is significant because the melting of the Greenland ice sheet — like the melting of other glaciers around the world — is one of the most important drivers of sea level rise. Each time a rain-on-snow event happens, says Harper, the structure of the firn layer is altered, and it becomes a bit more susceptible to impacts from the next melting event. “It suggests that only a minor increase in frequency and intensity of similar rain-on-snow events in the future will have an outsized impact,” he says.

Rain used to be rare in most parts of the Arctic: the polar regions were, and still are, usually too cold and dry for clouds to form and absorb moisture. When precipitation did occur, it most often came as snow.

Twenty years ago, annual precipitation in the Arctic ranged from about 10 inches in southern areas to as few as 2 inches or less in the far north. But as Arctic temperatures continue to warm three times faster than the planet as a whole, melting sea ice and more open water will, according to a recent study, bring up to 60 percent more precipitation in coming decades, with more rain falling than snow in many places.

Such changes will have a profound impact on sea ice, glaciers, and Greenland’s ice cap — which are already melting at record rates, according to Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado. The precipitation will trigger more flooding; an acceleration in permafrost thaw; profound changes to water quality; more landslides and snow avalanches; more misery for Arctic animals, many of which are already in precipitous decline due to the shifting climate; and serious challenges for the Indigenous peoples who depend on those animals.

Changes can already be seen. Thunderstorms are now spawning in places where they have historically been rare. In 2022, the longest thunderstorm in the history of Arctic observation was recorded in Siberia. The storm lasted nearly an hour, twice as long as typical thunderstorms in the south. Just a few days earlier, a series of three thunderstorms had passed through a part of Alaska that rarely experiences them.

Surface crevassing, which allows water to enter into the interior of the icecap, is accelerating, thanks to rapid melting. And slush avalanches, which mobilize large volumes of water-saturated snow, are becoming common: In 2016, a rain-on-snow event triggered 800 slush avalanches in West Greenland.

Rick Thoman, a climate scientist based at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, says that rainfall at any time of year has increased 17 percent in the state over the past half century, triggering floods that have closed roads and landslides that, in one case, sent 180 million tons of rock into a narrow fjord, generating a tsunami that reached 633 feet high — one of the highest tsunamis ever recorded worldwide.

But winter rain events are also on the rise. Where Fairbanks used to see rain on snow about two or three times a decade, Thoman says, it now occurs at least once in most winters. That’s a problem for local drivers because, with little solar heating, ice that forms on roads from November rains typically remains until spring.

The science of both rain and rain-on-snow events in the Arctic is in its infancy, and it is complicated by the fact that satellites and automated weather stations have a difficult time differentiating between snow and rain, and because there are not enough scientists on the ground to evaluate firsthand what happens when rain falls on snow, says Serreze.

It was hunters who first reported, in 2003, that an estimated 20,000 muskoxen had starved to death on Banks Island, in Canada’s High Arctic, following an October rain-on-snow event. It happened again in the winters of 2013-2014 and in 2020-2021, when tens of thousands of reindeer died on Siberia’s Yamal Peninsula.

In both places, the rain had hardened the snow and, in some places, produced ice, which made it almost impossible for the animals to dig down and reach the lichen, sedges, and other plants they need to survive the long winter.

Kyle Joly, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. National Park Service, views an increase in rain-on-snow events as yet another serious challenge for the world’s 2.4 million caribou, which have been in rapid decline pretty much everywhere over the past three generations. The ebbing numbers are a huge concern for northern Indigenous people who rely on caribou for food. Public health experts fear that Indigenous health will be seriously compromised if the animals can no longer be hunted.

Alaska’s western Arctic herd, which has been, at times, the largest in North America, had 490,000 animals in 2003 but just 152,000 in 2023. But at least that herd can still be hunted. In Canada’s central Arctic, the Bathurst herd has plummeted from roughly 470,000 animals in the 1980s to just 6,240 animals today; hunting those caribou in the Northwest Territories is currently banned.

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Caribou are highly adaptable to extreme environmental variability, and their numbers can rise and fall for several reasons, according to Joly. The proliferation of biting flies in a warming climate can sap their energy, as can migration detours forced by the spread of roads and industrial development, and an increase in dumps of deep, soft snow, which are linked to the loss of sea ice. (An ice-free ocean surface increases humidity near the surface, which leads to more moisture in the atmosphere.)

Sharp-edged ice and crusty snow can also lacerate caribous’ legs, and rain on snow has periodically affected some of Alaska’s 32 caribou herds. For example, the day after Christmas in 2021, temperatures rose to more than 60 degrees F (15 degrees C) during a storm that dropped an inch of rain over a large area of the state. Alaska’s Fish and Game Department estimated that 40 percent of the moose, caribou, and sheep in the state’s interior perished that winter because they could not dig through the hard snow and ice.

It’s not just caribou and muskoxen that are being threatened. There is growing evidence that rain falling in parts of the Arctic where precipitation usually arrives as snow is killing peregrine falcon chicks, which have only downy feathers to protect them from the cold. Once water soaks their down, the chicks succumb to hypothermia.

Few scientists have evaluated the hydrological and geochemical impact of rain-on-snow events in polar desert regions, which are underlain by permafrost and receive very little snow in winter. Recent studies published by Queen’s University scientist Melissa Lafrenière and colleagues from several universities in Canada and the United States point to a worrisome picture unfolding at the Cape Bounty Arctic Watershed Observatory on Melville Island, in Canada’s High Arctic, which has been in operation since 2003.

A shift from runoff dominated by snowmelt in spring and summer to runoff from both rain and snowmelt is accelerating permafrost thaw and ground slumping, and it’s filling fish-bearing lakes with sediments. One study found a fiftyfold increase in turbidity in one lake that led to a rise in mercury and a decrease in the health of Arctic char, a fish that the Inuit of the Arctic rely on.

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Lafrenière says that with only 20 years of measurement, it’s difficult to point conclusively to a trend. “But we have been seeing more rain falling in bigger events, in late summer especially. In 2022, we had unusually heavy rain that dropped an average summer’s worth of rain in less than 48 hours.”

To help scientists and decisionmakers better understand the impacts of what is happening, Serreze and his colleagues have created a database of all known rain-on-snow events across the Arctic. And increasingly, scientists like Robert Way of Queen’s University in Canada are working with the Inuit and other northern Indigenous people to ground-truth what they think the satellites and automated weather stations are telling them and to share the data that they are collecting and evaluating.

Way, who is of Inuit descent, was a young man when he witnessed parts of the George River herd, one of the world’s largest caribou herds, migrate across the ice in central Labrador. “There were thousands and thousands and thousands of them,” he recalls with wonder. The herd contained 750,000 animals in the 1980s; today, it has no more than 20,000. The animals are facing the same climate change challenges that caribou everywhere are facing.

Way is working with Labrador’s Inuit to better understand how these weather events will affect caribou and food security, as well as their own travel on snow and ice. But, he says, “It’s increasingly difficult to do this research in Canada because half of the weather stations have been shut down” due to federal budget cuts. Most of the manually operated stations, Way adds, “are being replaced by automated ones that produce data that makes it hard for scientists to determine whether it is raining or snowing when temperatures hover around the freezing mark.”

To better understand how rain-on-snow events are affecting the Arctic, Serreze says, researchers need to better understand how often and where these events occur, and what impact they have on the land- and seascape. “Satellite data and weather models can reveal some of these events, but these tools are imperfect,” he says. “To validate what is happening at the surface and the impacts of these events on reindeer, caribou, and musk oxen requires people on the ground. And we don’t have enough people on the ground.” Researchers need to work with Indigenous people “who are directly dealing with the effects of rain on snow,” he noted.

In 2007, Serreze stated in a University of Colorado Boulder study that the Arctic may have reached a climate-change tipping point that could trigger a cascade of events. More rain than snow falling in the Arctic is one such event, and he expects more surprises to come. “We are trying to keep up with what is going on,” he says, “but we keep getting surprised.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Rain comes to the Arctic, with a cascade of troubling changes on Mar 16, 2024.

California is not on track to meet its greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal for 2030, new data released by nonprofit think tank Next 10 and prepared by consulting firm Beacon Economics reveals.

To do so, the state must triple its annual emissions reductions, the 2023 California Green Innovation Index said.

“The increase in emissions following the pandemic makes it all the more difficult for California to meet its climate goals on time,” said Next 10 Founder F. Noel Perry, as reported by ESG News. “In fact, we may be further behind than many people realize. If you look at the trajectory since 2010, California won’t meet our 2030 climate goal until 2047. We need to triple the rate of decarbonization progress each year to hit that target.”

A recent jump in emissions from in-state power generation has been offsetting progress in the transportation sector, the report said.

California Air Resources Board (CARB) data shows that the state’s yearly greenhouse gas emissions increased 3.4 percent in 2021, while an early estimate by CARB shows emissions began decreasing the following year.

The new report said the promotion of zero-emissions vehicles (ZEVs) and buildings, as well as renewable sources of energy, must be accelerated to meet California’s goal of reducing emissions to 40 percent of 1990 levels by the end of the decade. To achieve this, the state would need to move from an average yearly reduction of roughly 1.5 percent to about 4.6 percent. However, as 2023 emissions data is not yet available, the percentage may be higher.

“California is an important state to study decarbonization because the state has a great deal of technology and wealth,” said Stafford Nichols, Beacon Economics research manager, as Reuters reported. “If California can’t decarbonize its economy then that does not bode well for less well-off economies.”

However, the prognosis for California’s greening economy has significant upsides. Of the 50 states, California is in third place for lowest per-capita emissions, after New York and Massachusetts. Additionally, the state economy’s carbon intensity — emissions versus gross domestic product — has fallen by half in the past two decades.

Transportation emissions in California — which went up 7.4 percent from 2020 to 2021 — make up almost 40 percent of its carbon footprint. Overall emissions from heavy-duty trucks, cars and other vehicles went down more than 10 percent from 2019 to 2021, which illustrates the state’s success in reducing its biggest pollution source. Heavy-duty vehicle emissions fell 14.1 percent from 2018 to 2021.

“While California is moving in the right direction in many ways, renewable electricity generation must greatly increase in the coming years in order to reach the state’s goal,” Nichols said, as reported by ESG News. “To meet our upcoming target of 50% of electricity from renewable sources by 2026, we need to double the speed we are adding RPSeligible renewables to our power mix, from 4.3% per year to 8.7% per year.”

ZEVs made up one-quarter of all new vehicle sales last year, an all-time high for the state. California also reached its 2025 ZEV onroad goal of 1.5 million in April of 2023, two years ahead of target. If the trajectory stays the same, it will meet its five million ZEV target for 2030 a year early.

A new goal for decarbonization of the power sector was adopted by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in February 2024. It calls for a 58 percent reduction in emissions by 2035, as compared to 2020 levels. In order to achieve the goal, the state needs to lower power emissions by 6.3 percent yearly from 2021 to 2035, according to Beacon Economics — almost twice the 3.5 percent average rate from 2011 to 2021. From 2020 to 2021, there was an upward trend of 4.8 percent.

For decades, California led rooftop solar, but new CPUC changes relating to solar generation compensation greatly reduced residential installation of solar panels. Currently, there are 1.8 million installations in the state with a generating power of 15-plus gigawatts running at peak capacity. However, there has been a 66 to 83 percent reduction in applications for residential rooftop solar since the new rules took effect in April of 2023.

Another challenge is that industrial wind and solar projects are finding it difficult to connect to the grid due to many of the transmission lines being at capacity or not being able to connect to renewable power installations in remote areas. An average project built in 2022 had to wait five years to be up and running after the initial interconnection request.

“While California is well-positioned as a leader on climate, there are substantial obstacles to accelerating our decarbonization efforts in an equitable way that benefits all Californians,” Perry said, as ESG News reported. “These are not insurmountable, but we need to act urgently in order to achieve these goals on time.”

The post California Must Triple Its Rate of Carbon Emissions Reductions to Reach 2030 Target, Report Says appeared first on EcoWatch.

In the past eight years, the Great Barrier Reef — the largest coral reef in the world, stretching 1,429 miles — has experienced five mass bleaching events, tied by scientists to climate change.

Most recently, corals around six islands in Turtle Group National Park, located about 6.2 miles off Australia’s Queensland Coast, have seen extensive bleaching, according to scientists from James Cook University, as reported by Reuters.

“It was quite devastating to see just how much bleaching there was, particularly in the shallows… (but) they were all still at the stage of bleaching where they could still recover as long as the water temperatures decline in time,” Maya Srinivasan, lead researcher of the survey, told Reuters.

Warming sea surface temperatures cause corals to expel the beneficial, colorful algae that live in them while providing them with food, causing the corals to turn white. If ocean waters cool in time, bleached corals may recover, but if temperatures stay elevated long enough, the corals will die.

The researchers carried out aerial surveys of more than 300 reefs and found that most had “prevalent shallow water coral bleaching,” CNN reported. According to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, ongoing surveys in the water that can gauge the depth and severity of bleaching were also being conducted.

“We now need to combine the spatial coverage captured from the air with in-water surveys to assess the severity of coral bleaching in deeper reef habitats across the different regions of the Marine Park,” said Dr. Neal Cantin, Australian Institute of Marine Science senior research scientist, as reported by The Guardian.

Srinivasan said data collected from the six Turtle Group islands would be used in an ongoing analysis of the ways in which corals are impacted by bleaching, floods and cyclones, Reuters reported.

“The Reef has demonstrated its capacity to recover from previous coral bleaching events, severe tropical cyclones, and crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks,” the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said, as reported by CNN.

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The Australian Climate Council, an independent climate change communication organization, said the Great Barrier Reef’s sudden shifts point to larger risks for the UNESCO World Heritage Site, according to Reuters.

“With climate change where there’s predictions that these sorts of disturbance events will become more frequent and be of higher intensity… it’s becoming even more crucial than ever to have these long-term monitoring programs continue into the future,” Srinivasan added.

Simon Bradshaw, Climate Council’s research director, described the current bleaching event as “an underwater bushfire.”

“Climate change is the biggest risk not just to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia but also to coral reefs around the world,” said Tanya Plibersek, Australia’s environment minister, as CNN reported. “We know that we need to give our beautiful reef the best chance of survival for the planet and animals that call it home, for the 64,000 people whose livelihoods depend on reef tourism.”

The post ‘An Underwater Bushfire’: Major Coral Bleaching Event in Northern Parts of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef appeared first on EcoWatch.

This week’s quote is from author Michael Pollan: “The garden suggests there might be a…

The post Earth911 Inspiration: Meet Nature Halfway appeared first on Earth911.

Up to 10 informants managed by the FBI were embedded in anti-pipeline resistance camps near the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation at the height of mass protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016. The new details about federal law enforcement surveillance of an Indigenous environmental movement were released as part of a legal fight between North Dakota and the federal government over who should pay for policing the pipeline fight. Until now, the existence of only one other federal informant in the camps had been confirmed. 

The FBI also regularly sent agents wearing civilian clothing into the camps, one former agent told Grist in an interview. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, operated undercover narcotics officers out of the reservation’s Prairie Knights Casino, where many pipeline opponents rented rooms, according to one of the depositions. 

The operations were part of a wider surveillance strategy that included drones, social media monitoring, and radio eavesdropping by an array of state, local, and federal agencies, according to attorneys’ interviews with law enforcement. The FBI infiltration fits into a longer history in the region. In the 1970s, the FBI infiltrated the highest levels of the American Indian Movement, or AIM. 

The Indigenous-led uprising against Energy Transfer Partners’ Dakota Access oil pipeline drew thousands of people seeking to protect water, the climate, and Indigenous sovereignty. For seven months, participants protested to stop construction of the pipeline and were met by militarized law enforcement, at times facing tear gas, rubber bullets, and water hoses in below-freezing weather.

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After the pipeline was completed and demonstrators left, North Dakota sued the federal government for more than $38 million — the cost the state claims to have spent on police and other emergency responders, and for property and environmental damage. Central to North Dakota’s complaints are the existence of anti-pipeline camps on federal land managed by the Army Corps of Engineers. The state argues that by failing to enforce trespass laws on that land, the Army Corps allowed the camps to grow to up to 8,000 people and serve as a “safe haven” for those who participated in illegal activity during protests and caused property damage. 

In an effort to prove that the federal government failed to provide sufficient support, attorneys deposed officials leading several law enforcement agencies during the protests. The depositions provide unusually detailed information about the way that federal security agencies intervene in climate and Indigenous movements. 

Until the lawsuit, the existence of only one federal informant in the camps was known: Heath Harmon was working as an FBI informant when he entered into a romantic relationship with water protector Red Fawn Fallis. A judge eventually sentenced Fallis to nearly five years in prison after a gun went off when she was tackled by police during a protest. The gun belonged to Harmon. 

Manape LaMere, a member of the Bdewakantowan Isanti and Ihanktowan bands, who is also Winnebago Ho-chunk and spent months in the camps, said he and others anticipated the presence of FBI agents, because of the agency’s history. Camp security kicked out several suspected infiltrators. “We were already cynical, because we’ve had our heart broke before by our own relatives,” he explained.

“The culture of paranoia and fear created around informants and infiltration is so deleterious to social movements, because these movements for Indigenous people are typically based on kinship networks and forms of relationality,” said Nick Estes, a historian and member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe who spent time at the Standing Rock resistance camps and has extensively researched the infiltration of the AIM movement by the FBI. Beyond his relationship with Fallis, Harmon had close familial ties with community leaders and had participated in important ceremonies. Infiltration, Estes said, “turns relatives against relatives.”

Less widely known than the FBI’s undercover operations are those of the BIA, which serves as the primary police force on Standing Rock and other reservations. During the NoDAPL movement, the BIA had “a couple” of narcotics officers operating undercover at the Prairie Knights Casino, according to the deposition of Darren Cruzan, a member of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma who was the director of the BIA’s Office of Justice Services at the time.  

It’s not unusual for the BIA to use undercover officers in its drug busts. However, the intelligence collected by the Standing Rock undercovers went beyond narcotics. “It was part of our effort to gather intel on, you know, what was happening within the boundaries of the reservation and if there were any plans to move camps or add camps or those sorts of things,” Cruzan said.

A spokesperson for Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who oversees the BIA, also declined to comment. 

According to the deposition of Jacob O’Connell, the FBI’s supervisor for the western half of North Dakota during the Standing Rock protests, the FBI was infiltrating the NoDAPL movement weeks before the protests gained international media attention and attracted thousands. By August 16, 2016, the FBI had tasked at least one “confidential human source” with gathering information. The FBI eventually had five to 10 informants in the protest camps — “probably closer to 10,” said Bob Perry, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Minneapolis field office, which oversees operations in the Dakotas, in another deposition. The number of FBI informants at Standing Rock was first reported by the North Dakota Monitor.

According to Perry, FBI agents told recruits what to collect and what not to collect, saying, “We don’t want to know about constitutionally protected activity.” Perry added, “We would give them essentially a list: ‘Violence, potential violence, criminal activity.’ To some point it was health and safety as well, because, you know, we had an informant placed and in position where they could report on that.” 

The deposition of U.S. Marshal Paul Ward said that the FBI also sent agents into the camps undercover. O’Connell denied the claim. “There were no undercover agents used at all, ever.” He confirmed, however, that he and other agents did visit the camps routinely. For the first couple months of the protests, O’Connell himself arrived at the camps soon after dawn most days, wearing outdoorsy clothing from REI or Dick’s Sporting Goods. “Being plainclothes, we could kind of slink around and, you know, do what we had to do,” he said. O’Connell would chat with whomever he ran into. Although he sometimes handed out his card, he didn’t always identify himself as FBI. “If people didn’t ask, I didn’t tell them,” he said.  

He said two of the agents he worked with avoided confrontations with protesters, and Ward’s deposition indicates that the pair raised concerns with the U.S. marshal about the safety of entering the camps without local police knowing. Despite its efforts, the FBI uncovered no widespread criminal activity beyond personal drug use and “misdemeanor-type activity,” O’Connell said in his deposition. 

The U.S. Marshals Service, as well as Ward, declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation. A spokesperson for the FBI said the press office does not comment on litigation.

Infiltration wasn’t the only activity carried out by federal law enforcement. Customs and Border Protection responded to the protests with its MQ-9 Reaper drone, a model best known for remote airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, which was flying above the encampments by August 22, supplying video footage known as the “Bigpipe Feed.” The drone flew nearly 281 hours over six months, costing the agency $1.5 million. Customs and Border Protection declined a request for comment, citing the litigation.

The biggest beneficiary of federal law enforcement’s spending was Energy Transfer Partners. In fact, the company donated $15 million to North Dakota to help foot the bill for the state’s parallel efforts to quell the disruptions. During the protests, the company’s private security contractor, TigerSwan, coordinated with local law enforcement and passed along information collected by its own undercover and eavesdropping operations.

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Energy Transfer Partners also sought to influence the FBI. It was the FBI, however, that initiated its relationship with the company. In his deposition, O’Connell said he showed up at Energy Transfer Partners’ office within a day or two of beginning to investigate the movement and was soon meeting and communicating with executive vice president Joey Mahmoud.

At one point, Mahmoud pointed the FBI toward Indigenous activist and actor Dallas Goldtooth, saying that “he’s the ring leader making this violent,” according to an email an attorney described.

Throughout the protests, federal law enforcement officials pushed to obtain more resources to police the anti-pipeline movement. Perry wanted drones that could zoom in on faces and license plates, and O’Connell thought the FBI should investigate crowd-sourced funding, which could have ties to North Korea, he claimed in his deposition. Both requests were denied.

O’Connell clarified that he was more concerned about China or Russia than North Korea, and it was not just state actors that worried him. “If somebody like George Soros or some of these other well-heeled activists are trying to disrupt things in my turf, I want to know what’s going on,” he explained, referring to the billionaire philanthropist, who conspiracists theorize controls progressive causes.

To the federal law enforcement officials working on the ground at Standing Rock, there was no reason they shouldn’t be able to use all the resources at the federal government’s disposal to confront this latest Indigenous uprising.

“That shit should have been crushed like immediately,” O’Connell said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline FBI sent several informants to Standing Rock protests, court documents show on Mar 15, 2024.

A common “old world” tree, European beech can be found across Europe — from southern Scandinavia and Spain to Sicily and northwest Turkey.

A new study by an international team of researchers has found that the summer solstice triggers synchronized beech tree reproduction all over the continent, influencing ecosystem functions.

“We got inspired by a recent Science paper where researchers from Switzerland found that the effects of temperature on leaf senescence switch at the summer solstice. The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, and happens at the same time anywhere in the Hemisphere,” said Dr. Valentin Journé, lead author of the analysis and a postdoctoral researcher at Poland’s Adam Mickiewcz University, in a press release from University of Liverpool.

The researchers examined the relationships between the seed production of perennials like the European beech and weather patterns, as well as looked at how trees synchronize their reproduction across thousands of miles.

Earlier research by the team had revealed that an external factor like weather triggered the synchrony, but the mystery remained as to how the beech — which grows in highly diverse climates —  carried this out.

The team looked at small changes in the beech trees’ temperature responses and concluded that the summer solstice was the trigger.

“A celestial cue that occurs simultaneously across the entire hemisphere is the longest day (the summer solstice),” the authors wrote in the study. “European beech abruptly opens its temperature-sensing window on the solstice, and hence widely separated populations all start responding to weather signals in the same week. This celestial ‘starting gun’ generates ecological events with high spatial synchrony across the continent.”

The study, “Summer solstice orchestrates the subcontinental-scale synchrony of mast seeding,” was published in the journal Nature Plants.

“The sharp response of beech trees is just remarkable. Once the day starts to shorten after the summer solstice, the temperature sensing-window opens simultaneously, all across Europe,” said Jessie Foest, co-author of the study and a Ph.D. researcher in the Department of Geography at University of Liverpool, in the press release. “What’s truly jaw-dropping is that the change in day length that the trees are able to detect is really small – we are talking about a few minutes over a week. Apparently, trees are able to recognise the difference.”

Many perennials only reproduce every few years in order to build up resources and produce an abundance of seed. Ecosystems are greatly affected by the European beech’s wide-ranging, coordinated annual seed production.

“Such large-scale regional synchronisation of seed production by trees has important consequences for ecosystems. Large-seeding years result in a pulse of resources for wildlife, while reproductive failures result in famines for seed-eating animals. When this variation is synchronised at sub-continental scales the consequences include far-reaching disruptions in food webs, including rodent outbreaks, migration of ungulates and birds, and spikes in wildlife-borne human diseases,” the press release said.

The post Summer Solstice Triggers Mass, Synchronized European Beech Tree Reproduction, Study Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.

People living near plants that use ethylene oxide to sterilize medical equipment have for years pressured regulators to crack down on their toxic emissions. Residents in communities from Laredo, Texas, to Willowbrook, Illinois have tried to shut these facilities down, challenged them in court, and fought for air sampling studies to measure their exposure to the carcinogen. 

The Environmental Protection Agency has finally taken notice.

Today the agency finalized new regulations that will require dozens of medical sterilization companies to adopt procedures and technologies that it claims will reduce emissions of the toxic chemical by 90 percent. The rule will take effect within two to three years, a longer timeline than advocates of the change hoped for. Still, regulators and community advocates alike hailed the change.

“We have followed the science and listened to communities to fulfill our responsibility to safeguard public health from this pollution – including the health of children, who are particularly vulnerable to carcinogens early in life,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan in a press release.

According to the Food and Drug Administration, more than 50 percent of the nation’s medical equipment is sterilized using ethylene oxide. The nondescript buildings where this fumigation occurs came under scrutiny in 2016, after the EPA revised its risk assessment of the chemical, finding it 30 percent more toxic to adults and 60 percent more toxic to children than previously known. Over the years, studies have linked exposure to the chemical to cancers of the lungs, breasts, and lymph nodes.

The medical sterilization industry has recently warned that too-stringent regulations risk disrupting the supply of medical equipment.

“The industry supports updated standards while ensuring the technology patients rely on around the clock is sterile and well-supplied,” wrote the Advanced Medical Technology Association, a trade group, in a February press release.

After the agency published a 2019 analysis indicating unusually high levels of cancer risk near sterilizers, people around the country rallied against the facilities in their communities, with a Chicago suburb even managing to shut one down. Federal data indicate that more than 96 of these businesses operate in 32 states and Puerto Rico and are concentrated near Latino communities. 

Marvin Brown, an attorney at Earthjustice who advocated for stronger oversight of toxic emissions from commercial sterilizers, applauded the new rule, noting that EPA regulations were last revised in 1994, long before the agency was aware of the true risk of ethylene oxide.

“Overall it’s definitely a victory for our clients in terms of getting EPA to finally revise and increase regulations on an industry that’s really been operating with a lack of controls for the past 30 years,” he told Grist in an interview.

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The rule will rely upon several measures to achieve an estimated 90 percent reduction in toxic emissions. It requires companies to install air monitors inside their facilities to continuously track the level of ethylene oxide, and report their results to the EPA on a quarterly basis. Brown considers these continuous monitoring systems important because they capture pollutants escaping through leaks and cracks in the sterilization chambers, providing a more comprehensive assessment of the facility’s emissions.

The rule also requires both large and small sterilizers to install “permanent total enclosures,” which creates negative pressure in a building, preventing air from escaping. Instead of being released into the atmosphere and putting nearby residents at risk, any emissions are routed to a device that burns them.

But for all its benefits, Brown said, the new regulation leaves out several important protections residents and advocates fought for. The EPA pushed back the rule’s implementation from 18 months for all sterilizers to 2 years for large facilities and 3 years for smaller ones, a change Brown attributed to industry pressure. The decision will come as a disappointment, he said, to residents who hoped for more immediate relief. 

Notably, the new regulations do not require companies to monitor the air near their facilities, making it difficult for communities to assess the concentrations of ethylene oxide near their homes. The agency has argued that such a provision is excessive given the new monitoring requirements inside of facilities, but advocates of the change note that internal monitors don’t capture leaks that happen outdoors, such as from trucks carrying newly sterilized equipment. 

Ethylene oxide emissions from the warehouses where medical equipment is stored after sterilization are a growing concern. After fumigation, these items can carry traces of the chemical that evaporate for days or weeks afterwards. Officials in Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division found that this “offgassing” can create substantial concentrations of the chemical in the air, and a recent Grist investigation revealed that dozens of workers at one warehouse in Lithia Springs experienced nausea, headaches, rashes, and seizures after being exposed to these fumes on the job. The EPA’s new regulations do not cover such emissions, an omission Brown called “unfortunate.” 

“There’s still a lot more work to be done,” he said of the new rule. “But this is a good step in terms of stricter emission controls, and new emission controls that did not exist before.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline EPA finally cracks down on the carcinogen used to sterilize medical equipment on Mar 14, 2024.

According to a new report by European scientists, plastics — from food packaging to furniture, clothing and medical equipment — contain thousands more chemicals than environmental agencies had previously estimated, raising concerns about consumer safety and pollution, reported Reuters.

More than 13,000 plastic chemicals had been identified by the United Nations Environment Programme, but the new report by PlastChem revealed more than 16,000 — more than 4,200 of which are “of concern” because they have been found to be hazardous to the environment and human health. According to the report, less than one percent may be categorized as “non-hazardous.”

“Chemicals are a central aspect of the plastics issue. Although there is a wealth of scientific information on plastic chemicals and polymers to inform policymakers, implementing this evidence is challenging because information is scattered and not easily accessible,” PlastChem said.

The report comes as governments work on the world’s first global plastics pollution treaty to tackle the 440.9 million tons of plastic waste produced annually, Reuters reported.

“To robustly solve plastic pollution, you actually have to look at the full life cycle of plastics and you have to address the chemicals issue,” said co-author of the report Jane Muncke, who is managing director of Switzerland’s Food Packaging Forum, as reported by Reuters.

One of the biggest concerns with the many toxic chemicals found in plastics is that they can leach into food and water, potentially causing health problems like heart disease and fertility issues.

“It is now well established that many phthalates are endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Some phthalates have been banned in Europe and other regions. Further, UV-328, due to its persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic properties has been added to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2023,” the report said. “At the dawn of the plastic age, scientists were unaware of the toxicological and environmental impacts of using additives in plastics. Their work to make plastic durable is essentially what made plastics highly useful, but also persistent and toxic.”

The report’s authors pointed out that attempting to tackle plastic waste through reuse and recycling isn’t enough — there needs to be more transparency when it comes to chemicals like processing aids, additives and impurities, Reuters reported.

Contributing to the issue is that the fundamental chemical identity of a quarter of plastics is unknown, the report said.

“At the core of the problem is the chemical complexity of plastics,” Wagner said, as reported by Reuters. “Often producers don’t really know which kind of chemicals they have in their products and that comes from very complex value chains.”

International regulations are in place for just six percent of plastics chemicals, something that could be addressed in a plastics treaty. Next month, negotiations will resume in Ottawa, Canada, with the goal of having a finalized treaty in December.

“Addressing plastic chemicals and polymers of concern comprehensively is expected to result in substantial benefits for the environment and human health, promote innovation into safer plastic chemicals, material, and products as well as support a transition to a non-toxic, circular economy,” the report said. “Since no country has the capacity to address the transboundary issue of plastic chemicals and polymers individually, the state of the science implies that a collective global response is most appropriate to mitigate environmental and health impacts. Adopting evidence-based policies that prioritize chemical safety and sustainability will provide a pathway towards a safe and sustainable future.”

The post Plastics Contain Thousands More Chemicals Than Previously Thought, Report Finds appeared first on EcoWatch.