February’s average global temperature on land and the ocean’s surface was 2.52 degrees Fahrenheit above the century’s average of 53.8 degrees Fahrenheit — the warmest February in the 175-year NOAA planetary climate record.
“Temperatures were warmer to much-warmer-than-average across the Arctic with the exception of much of Greenland to northern Iceland, and parts of the North Atlantic,” NOAA said. “Above-average to much-above-average temperatures also covered almost all of North America, most of western Europe into western Asia, most of South America, Africa and Australia. Record warm February temperatures affected many parts of Europe, South America, and in the southern half of Africa.”
North and South America and Europe broke February temperature records, while it was the second-warmest February ever recorded in Africa, a NOAA press release said.
It was also the warmest meteorological winter — December 2030 to February 2024 — on record in the Northern Hemisphere and the warmest meteorological summer in the Southern Hemisphere. The global surface temperature was 2.45 degrees Fahrenheit above average for the 20th century.
“Record-warm temperatures covered approximately 13.8% of the world’s surface this February, which was the highest percentage for February since the start of records in 1951, and 7.4% higher than the previous February record in 1986,” NOAA said.
Sea surface temperatures were warmer than average for much of the western, northern and equatorial Pacific Ocean, the tropical and northeastern Atlantic Ocean and large portions of the Indian Ocean.
There is a 45 percent likelihood that this year will be the warmest in NOAA’s record-keeping history, as well as a 99 percent chance 2024 will be among the top five hottest years.
Ice coverage worldwide was also low, according to the report.
“Global sea ice extent (coverage) was the fourth smallest in the 46-year record, at 460,000 square miles below the 1991–2020 average. Arctic sea ice extent was slightly below average (by 100,000 square miles), whereas Antarctic sea ice extent was substantially below average (by 370,000 square miles), ranking second smallest on record,” reported NOAA.
Weather activity in the tropics was also heightened in February, with 11 named storms around the world — above the average of seven for the period 1991 to 2020. Just two of the storms made landfall, in northern Australia.
Just one tropical cyclone — Djoungou — spun in the central Indian Ocean, away from land. The Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans did not see any active storms, save for Akara — a weak tropical cyclone in the South Atlantic. Akara was notable, however, since tropical storm development there is usually inhibited by atmospheric conditions.
Copernicus Climate Change Service Director Carlo Buentempo commented that the record-breaking temperatures in February were “not really surprising,” reported Earth.Org.
“The climate responds to the actual concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere so, unless we manage to stabilise those, we will inevitably face new global temperature records and their consequences,” said Buentempo.
A new study warns that athletes playing sports on artificial turf could become covered in per- and polyfluorinated substances, or PFAS, present in the turf.
Researchers from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) conducted a small-scale study of young athletes, as well as their coaches, who played soccer on an artificial turf field. The results showed that three out of four people on the artificial turf had an increase in the amount of PFAS on their skin, while those who played on real grass fields did not have increases in PFAS levels on the skin.
On one player, the amount of PFAS on the skin after playing on the artificial turf more than doubled the amount on the player’s skin tested before playing, The Guardian reported.
“Although this was a preliminary study, it raises red flags and calls for additional studies to determine what risk there is of dermal absorption of PFAS from artificial turf,” Kyla Bennett, science policy director for PEER, said in a press release.
According to Bennett, athletes playing on artificial turf could inhale or ingest PFAS or absorb these chemicals through skin contact.
“It’s also important to note that knowledge of dermal uptake of PFAS is severely lacking, but it may be a significant exposure pathway,” Bennett said.
PFAS, or forever chemicals, are synthetic chemicals that may never break down in the environment. Scientists are still conducting more research on how PFAS affect human health and the environment, but previous studies show these chemicals could be linked to negative reproductive impacts, developmental impacts in children or even increased risks of certain types of cancer.
While the findings of the study are preliminary, they do highlight the pervasiveness of PFAS and provide additional research on PFAS in faux grass. In 2019, lab tests showed PFAS in the backing of artificial turf and fluorine in the plastic-based blades of fake grass, which could indicate PFAS in the faux grass blades, as reported by The Intercept.
Artificial turf is often used for sports fields to reduce maintenance needs, or it may be used in drought-prone areas as an alternative to real grass that requires a lot of water. PFAS are common in waterproof or weatherproof products, including artificial turf, and can be found in the many layers that make up this kind of ground cover.
The issue of PFAS in artificial grass was brought up recently in the California legislature, when lawmakers proposed banning PFAS in synthetic turf. The bill was vetoed by California Governor Gavin Newsom in October 2023, as the governor noted that the bill did not name a regulatory agency to enforce the ban, Cal Matters reported.
According to PEER, there are about 12,000 to 13,000 sports fields with artificial turf in the U.S. But aside from concerns about PFAS exposure for humans, Bennett noted that these so-called forever chemicals can also leach into local environments.
“In 2024, the last thing we should be doing is putting down acres of a plastic fossil fuel product… with chemicals that are going to get all over athletes’ skin, and into soil and water,” Bennett told The Guardian. “It just boggles my mind that people are still considering using this stuff.”
Eight million tons of plastic reaches our oceans annually. The top plastic marine debris items are cigarette butts, food wrappers, beverage bottles and lids.
Ocean currents pull plastic into convergence zones called “gyres” that form patches of waste at their centers. The largest is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is twice the size of Texas.
Various technologies are being employed to clean up ocean plastic: Seabin vacuums in litter and microplastics; Wasser 3.0 swirls hybrid silica gels in a vortex to form microplastic agglomerates; the Great Bubble Barrier pushes plastic to the surface of Amsterdam’s canals using air bubbles.
The Ocean Cleanup is one of the most well-known cleanup efforts in the ocean, primarily targeting the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The organization aims to eliminate 90% of floating plastic in the oceans by 2040.
Cleanup efforts have been criticized for their impact on marine ecosystems, particularly the neuston floating on the ocean’s surface and the fish trapped in plastic-catching nets.
Ocean Plastic: The Basics
Turkish free-diver Sahika Encumen dives to raise awareness of plastic pollution by the Bosphorus coastline of Istanbul, Turkey on June 27, 2020. Sebnem Coskun / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
The Earth’s oceans are teeming with life — and with plastic. In fact, by 2050, it’s expected that there will be even more plastic in the ocean than fish.
Adding to the 150 million tons already in marine environments, eight million tons of plastic reaches our oceans every year. While the Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988 (also known as the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act) banned dumping waste directly into the ocean in the United States, waste still makes its way into waterways through illegal dumping and other means. Without proper systems worldwide for handling and disposing of waste, it can easily end up in rivers and eventually make its way into the ocean. In coastal areas especially, rainwater can flush litter into storm drains and eventually into the ocean.
Of the 380 million tons of plastic produced every year, 50% is single use products, much of which makes its way into oceans. Some top marine debris items, according to NOAA, are cigarette butts, food wrappers, plastic beverage bottles and lids.
Great Pacific Garbage Patch
When plastic makes its way into the ocean, some of it is pulled by ocean currents to consolidate in specific areas forming “patches” at their centers. There are five of these convergence zones, called “gyres” — one in the Indian Ocean, two in the Atlantic Ocean and two in the Pacific Ocean — and they are often the focus of large-scale ocean cleanup efforts. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is one of the largest and most well-known patches, and is located in the North Pacific Gyre between Hawaii and California. The patch is 1.6 million square kilometers: 2x the size of Texas and 3x the size of France. Within it are an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic; some are macroplastics — like cigarette butts, medical waste, plastic bags and bottles, abandoned fishing gear, etc. — but the majority of the debris is made up of microplastics. Overall, the majority (by count) of plastic pieces in the garbage patches consists of those smaller than 5mm in size.
A common misconception of these gyres and patches within them is that they’re just giant, floating mats of garbage. In reality, a lot of the waste floats below the surface of the water, and there are different concentrations throughout the patch itself — so some parts of it just look like regular ocean from above.
Why Is Ocean Plastic a Problem?
Ocean-bound plastic is expected to triple by 2040 if drastic action isn’t taken to reduce both our consumption and our waste management practices. Once plastic reaches the ocean, it causes serious harm to marine life and can impact global economies like fisheries and wildlife tourism.
Microplastics
Microplastics on the beach in Schiavonea, Calabria, Italy, transported by the Ionian sea during a sea storm, on March 2, 2019. Alfonso Di Vincenzo / KONTROLAB / LightRocket via Getty Images
Since the early 2000s, scientists have become aware of the presence of microplastics in oceans, although they’ve lingered in these marine ecosystems since the 1960s. Microplastics are tiny plastic fragments of five millimeters or less in diameter. “Primary” microplastics were created at that size for products like microbeads and plastic fibers used in synthetic fabrics, while “secondary” microplastics form from larger pieces of plastic as they degrade in the environment under the forces of water, wind and UV rays. Microplastics are ubiquitous in our environment now and are found virtually everywhere on Earth, from the deepest trenches of the ocean, to the highest mountains, to the air and water we take into our bodies. In the top foot of seawater alone, it’s estimated that between 82 and 358 trillion plastic particles (about 2.4 to 10.8 billion pounds) are floating.
Microplastics are particularly an issue in oceans, where they degrade more easily and are readily ingested by wildlife — so when plastics enter the ocean, they will eventually shed microplastics as they break down. Because these tiny plastic fragments aren’t filtered out by current sewage technology, removing plastic from the ocean (and preventing it from entering in the first place) is crucial to mitigating the impact of microplastics on marine environments.
Sand contaminated with microplastics on a beach in Thailand. pcess609 / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Threats to Marine Life and Ecosystems
A discarded fishing net on a coral reef in the Philippines. Francesco Ricciardi / iStock / Getty Images Plus
It’s not hard to imagine that millions of pieces of plastic would disrupt natural ecosystems, fundamentally changing their makeup and impacting the species that depend upon them. In all, plastic kills more than 100 million ocean animals per year. Marine life gets entangled in ghost fishing gear like abandoned nets, or other plastic items like grocery bags and six-pack rings. They ingest it too — almost all seabirds on Earth have eaten plastic, as well as half of sea turtles. Filling their stomachs with debris can cause these animals to die of starvation or suffer from internal injuries. Furthermore, debris in these patches can even transport species to other locations — including crabs, algae and barnacles that attach to the plastic — and might become invasive when they settle in new areas.
A gull picks up trash that washed up on the bank of the San Gabriel River by the Pacific Ocean, in Seal Beach, California on Dec. 13, 2022. Mark Rightmire / MediaNews Group / Orange County Register via Getty Images
Economic Impacts
Along with their environmental toll, ocean plastics also pose a threat to global economics. It makes ecosystems less resilient by altering biodiversity and other conditions, especially when connected with other stressors like ocean acidification and rising temperatures. Thus, plastic diminishes the ability of marine ecosystems to provide ecosystem services — that is, the beneficial services that ecosystems provide us with, such as carbon storage and climate regulation, recreational opportunities/tourism, waste detoxification, pest and disease control and a source of food for humans. When an ocean is functioning normally, it provides us with these positive (and profitable) ecological functions. It’s estimated that in 2011, marine ecosystem services created value for society of about $49.7 trillion a year — but due to marine plastic, there has been a 1-5% decline in overall ecosystem services, which equates to about $500 billion to $2,500 billion in value lost.
Scallops at an aquaculture farm in Tongoy Bay, Chile. Maria Valladares / NOAA OAR 2014 Photo Contest
Plastic pollution on the beach of Labuan Bajo, a small fishing town in Indonesia. Tristan Savatier / Moment / Getty Images
Tourism/recreation is another huge industry that depends on thriving marine ecosystems. Not only does environmental and wildlife tourism provide opportunities for enjoyment and fulfillment all over the globe, but it is also a multi-billion dollar sector that many economies depend on. Losing species that rely on impacted marine environments could mean fewer opportunities for enjoyment, and thus a loss of that crucial income. Species also have cultural value to humans; there is evidence that humans psychologically benefit from merely knowing that marine animals exist in their lives and will continue to live there.
Current Ocean Cleanup Technology
Amidst this gargantuan influx of ocean plastic, new technological innovations have begun targeting marine waste and finding effective ways to both remove it from natural environments and prevent it from ending up there in the first place.
Seabin V5
Seabin V5, launched in Australia in 2015, has set an ambitious target to clean 100 cities of marine debris by 2050. This innovative solution is primarily designed to operate in calm water, like harbors and marinas. As the name implies, the Seabin functions as a floating receptacle, collecting litter floating on the water’s surface as well as substances like oil, fuel and detergents. The device operates akin to a vacuum, drawing in water and catching waste materials, including microplastics. The collected waste is then retained, while the water is filtered and then sent back into the ocean. The potential of Seabin to address plastic pollution in still water is substantial, with projections anticipating the capture of about 90,000 plastic bags per year.
FRED
Developed by the San Diego-based nonprofit Clear Blue Sea, FRED (which stands for Floating Robot Eliminating Debris) emerged through a collaborative effort with high school and college interns and volunteers. The robot has a more specific focus than some other cleanup technologies, targeting mainly plastics prone to disintegrating into microplastics. Operating like a vacuum, FRED can pick up debris from 3cm to 2ft in size, using its two front flaps to direct debris onto a conveyor belt, which moves them into a collection basket. It also has additional front flaps to collect larger pieces of trash as well. Because the robot runs on renewable energy, it’s not at all dependent on fossil fuels. The machine’s slow pace, coupled with sophisticated sensors, effectively prevents marine life from entering and helps it function as a water quality monitor as well. FRED generates underwater maps too, which can help predict the impacts of climate change or runoff from pollution. While it’s a smaller operation, its holistic design that addresses both waste collection and water monitoring is one with great promise.
Wasser 3.0
Hailing from Germany, Wasser 3.0 is tackling microplastic pollution in waterways. The main component is a vortex system that swirls a non-toxic compound composed of hybrid silica gels, drawing in microplastics and causing them to clump into “popcorn-like” agglomerates that float to water’s surface, which can then be easily removed. The process has the potential to serve as a microplastic-removal tool in sewage systems — which currently are unable to filter out microplastics — and is already being used at a municipal wastewater treatment plant in Landau-Mörlheim, Germany, as well as a paper processing facility.
The Ocean Cleanup
Perhaps the most prominent and well-known system in the realm of ocean cleanup is led by The Ocean Cleanup (TOC), a Dutch nonprofit organization founded in 2013 by 18-year-old Boyan Slat. Slat was inspired to start the initiative after taking a family scuba diving trip to Greece at the age of 16, where he was dismayed to see more plastic bags than fish in the water. Backed by funding from Coca-Cola and other large corporations, The Ocean Cleanup has a mission to eliminate 90% of floating plastic in the oceans by 2040.
The Interceptor, an automated, solar-powered trash collection device at the mouth of Ballona Creek in Los Angeles, California on Dec. 12, 2022. Citizen of the Planet / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
TOC’s system employs a four-step process in collecting waste: target, capture, extract and recycle. Cameras first scan the surface of the water to find plastic hotspots and determine where the cleanup should target, also using computational modeling to predict where plastic hotspots will be based on water currents. Then, plastic is captured in the retention zone using their “Interceptor vessels.” Two boats pull a large U-shaped barrier through the water that goes about 3 meters below the surface, collecting the trash as it moves. The boats come together once a week to close the gap, and the retention zone is taken onboard and emptied onto the vessel. The collected waste is then separated into different recycling streams to send to shore.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is TOC’s first target. They began collecting plastic there in 2019, and have been removing it consistently since 2021. Thousands of tons have been collected by now, with around 245,680 kg of trash removed so far. TOC hopes to remove 1% of the patch by the end of 2023. Initially, the organization employed System 001, which proved to be ineffective. Now, however, they’re using System 002 while developing System 03, which will be a whopping 2,400 meters wide, three times larger than System 002, thereby reducing the number of units needed to clean up the patch.
In Rivers
A man rows a boat on the Siak River which is poluted by plastic waste in Pekanbaru, Riau Province, Indonesia on Dec. 17, 2020. Afrianto Silalahi / NurPhoto
Plastic that’s already in the ocean isn’t the only waste of importance. A huge amount of plastic reaches our oceans via rivers, so effective cleanup methods must also target these arteries to prevent waste from reaching marine environments in the first place. More than 1,000 rivers are responsible for 80% of ocean plastic, according to research conducted by The Ocean Cleanup in 2021. Along with cleaning up the GPGP, TOC’s approach also includes intercepting plastic from 1,000 rivers worldwide — currently, they are doing so at 11 rivers in Vietnam, Indonesia, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic and Malaysia — which they believe could halt 80% of river-based plastic from reaching oceans. They use AI-powered cameras to figure out contributing factors like depth, width and flow speed of the debris, and use their Interceptor vessels to collect waste at the mouth of these rivers and ferry it to waste management facilities.
Mr. Trash Wheel
Who knew a trash collector could be a tourist attraction? Mr. Trash Wheel — created by Clearwater Mills, LLC — resides in the Baltimore Harbor, catching ocean-bound plastic and entertaining visitors with his goofy, giant googly-eyes. The contraption uses two-foot-deep containment booms to collect trash flowing down the river. Water currents power the wheel — or solar power, when the currents aren’t strong enough — which rakes trash and lifts it out of the water and onto a conveyor belt. The trash then falls into a dumpster on another floating barge, which transports it away to be incinerated for electricity. Four such wheels exist across the harbor, known as the “Trash Wheel Family,” which has collected 2,362.23 tons of trash.
This barrier isn’t made of hard materials like many other cleanup systems — instead, it’s made of air. A Dutch startup company created this barrier for the Amsterdam canals to capture plastic through the whole width and depth of a river. The system’s successes include its lack of interference with the river’s regular functions — like ship use and fish passage — and its around-the-clock operation. A perforated tube runs along the bottom of the river and pushes out air at an angle, creating a “screen” of bubbles that blocks plastics and directs them towards the surface of the water into the catchment system. The group expects 86-90% of plastic to be removed in the Oude Rijn in Katwijk, Netherlands via this system.
WasteShark
Inspired by the whale shark, the WasteShark was created in 2018 by RanMarine Technology to clean up waterways, harbors, ponds and lakes, and was recently deployed in New York City’s Hudson River. Like the whale shark — which filters water through its body to ingest krill and plankton — the WasteShark filters water through it to catch plastic waste, as well as algae and other biomass. This small, boat-like drone floats along the water’s surface to collect debris to be taken to land and disposed of, using sensors to avoid obstacles. It also collects information on the water it traverses, like salinity and pH levels.
There has been controversy over whether ocean cleanup technologies are more harmful than helpful, and whether they’re as effective as they’ve claimed to be. In 2022, a video from The Ocean Cleanup of waste aboard one of their vessels prompted calls that the trash was too clean to have come from the ocean, and perhaps was staged, which the organization denies.
There have also been questions of whether their methods themselves are successful. System 001 was ineffective, and System 001B would have required 150 units to effectively clear the GPGP. System 002 has been more successful, but very expensive — although TOC says it will solve some of the issues in earlier systems, such as “overtopping,” by which plastic rode in waves over the top of the barriers.
Habitat Destruction and Bycatch
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other gyres aren’t just home to plastic, but also to other floating marine life that have made their home there, or have otherwise gotten caught up in this new ecosystem. Many of these systems — especially those that collect plastic in net-like structures — have the potential to be harmful in the way that trawl fishing is, which catches fish indiscriminately, although these nets are often more shallow and move slowly so the creatures can escape. Along with fish, sharks, and turtles, plastic-catching nets also disturb the neuston: a community of organisms including crabs, sea anemones, insects, snails, worms, nudibranchs and other small creatures that float on the surface of the ocean. The neuston is an important food source for larger species, and given the way it interacts with ocean currents, it often ends up where ocean plastic accumulates.
A baby green sea turtle swims at the surface of the Pacific Ocean in Malaysia. Reinhard Dirscherl / ullstein bild via Getty Images
The Ocean Cleanup in particular has come under fire for potential harm to ecosystems. Their systems have caught fish, small sharks, mollusks, and sea turtles accidentally, although the organization does maintain that by weight, it’s a very small amount compared to the plastic. In 40 tons of plastic, 141 kg of biological matter was caught, or 3.6g for every 1,000g of plastic collected. They also claim that fish can escape their catch system through hatches, and they have breathing ports for animals, as well as lights, acoustics and cameras to detect and deter species. The TOC has begun addressing their impact on the neuston as well, and maintains that preliminary data is promising, finding only one type of neustonic organism (Velella velella) had been caught. Seabin has also been criticized for its impact on marine life. A 2022 study found that for every 3.6 pieces of litter captured, so was one marine animal. When examined in a tidal marina, Seabin captured 58 items of litter a day on average, as well as 13 marine organisms, 50% of which were dead upon retrieval.
Energy Use
Many cleanup methods are powered by renewables, but not all of them, begging the question of whether these cleanups are causing greater harm to the climate while they remove trash. Ocean Cleanup ships, for example, are powered by fossil fuels and emit 660 tons of CO2 per month — although the group says that they will offset all emissions from System 002, as they have with 001. However, the legitimacy and ethicality of carbon offsets at large has been hotly debated.
Non-Surface Plastic and Prominence of Microplastics
Most cleanup systems only reach a few feet below the ocean’s surface, but many macroplastics do fall to the ocean floor and are thus missed in cleanup efforts. At such a depth, however, plastics are more likely to become a part of the ecosystem, so a disturbance would be more harmful to wildlife. Similarly, not all cleanup systems capture microplastics, which we know are an extremely significant source of harm in marine environments. During the first 5 years after being released into the ocean, 77% of floating plastic is found close to the shore where it erodes faster into microplastics. There is an argument to be made that beach cleanups and efforts closer to land would be more productive at ridding the ocean of microplastics — or dealing with plastic at the source by preventing its introduction into waterways at the outset. Some argue that focusing so heavily on ocean cleanup diverts attention away from addressing the creation and poor disposal of plastics in the first place.
What Action Can We Take?
Reduce Single-Use Plastics
A volunteer collects plastic waste on the shore of Freedom Island on International Coastal Cleanup Day in Las Pinas, Metro Manila, Philippines on Sept. 15, 2023. Ezra Acayan / Getty Images
At our current rate of consumption — and as the global population expands and becomes more affluent — plastic use is expected to triple by 2060, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Projects. To eliminate plastic waste from oceans, we must combat the source rather than the symptom. Even in the absence of systemic changes that limit consumption of single-use plastics worldwide, we can make the choice for ourselves to cut it out of our lives. Think of major sources of plastic in your life (especially single-use items), and consider ways you can replace them with reusables. Bring your own bags to the grocery store, carry a reusable coffee cup, ditch plastic water bottles entirely. Think further, too — what beauty products can you replace with sustainable alternatives? What kitchen items? How can you grocery shop in a way that reduces plastic? These are all questions we can answer for ourselves.
Recycle Correctly
Recycling is, of course, one solution to plastic waste by diverting it towards reuse. However, only 9% of plastic waste ultimately gets recycled, and even the plastic that does make it into the recycling bin doesn’t always get recycled in the end. With the acknowledgment that recycling is an inadequate complete solution — and can be used as a scapegoat to justify our overconsumption of resources — it’s a widely available resource and one we should take advantage of. First of all, learn how to recycle correctly. There are no universal rules for what should go in a recycling bin — it varies widely by municipality, which means you need to research how you’re supposed to do it for the specific recycling system you utilize. It’s also important to avoid “aspirational” recycling — that is, recycling things that you think (or hope) can be recycled — which can lead to even more waste at recycling centers.
As is the case with many environmental issues, legislation can be a major tool by which ocean-bound plastic can be controlled. The 2021 Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act has been introduced as an amendment to the Solid Waste Disposal Act, and aims to reduce the production of some single-use plastics — including packaging — and have producers on the hook for their disposal. Many places — including several U.S. states — are banning plastic bags, and some state-level initiatives want to create extended producer responsibility legislation. Legislation is an important tool for change. Vote for people who support these causes. Look into what they’ve voted for and against in the past, and advocate for the adoption of policies that limit plastic waste.
Participate in Cleanups
The Young European Ambassadors from the Western Balkans participate with other volunteers in the EU Beach Cleanup in Durres, Albania on Sept. 18, 2021. WeBalkans EU / CC BY 2.0
Cleaning up plastic waste doesn’t only have to happen in faraway gyres or major rivers to make a difference. Look into cleanups in your community hosted by local environmental organizations or volunteer groups. Larger organizations also host large-scale coastline cleanups, like the International Coastal Cleanup with the Ocean Conservancy, Oceana, 5 Gyres (which operates in 66 countries), the Pacific Beach Coalition and the Surfrider Foundation. Or, get out there yourself and clean up! Organize a cleanup if there isn’t one, utilizing your network through school, work or other organizations that you’re a part of.
Support Organizations
Whether it’s volunteering your time, donating money or sharing information about their efforts on your social media feed, support organizations that are combating ocean-bound plastic waste, like the Plastic Pollution Coalition and the Plastic Soup Foundation. Larger environmental organizations like the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Environmental Defense Fund have considerable influence and lobby for just environmental policies too.
Takeaway
Technological solutions to our plastic problems do exist, although they don’t come without their own issues. Ultimately, we should think about plastic pollution from all ends: reducing our consumption to begin with, preventing waste from entering waterways, and removing it when it does in a way that doesn’t impact ecosystems. Like many environmental issues, cleaning up ocean plastic is a wide-reaching one with impacts across many different sectors including human health, ecosystem stability and industry. Successful cleanup systems will have to reflect the complicated nature of the enterprise, taking all of these different concerns into account.
Earth911 spoke with gardening expert Melinda Myers to find out how to cut fresh, long-lasting flowers from your garden without harming your plants. Read on for her top tips.
It’s almost that magical time of year that the Humane Society of America likens to a “natural disaster.” Kitten season.
“The level of emotions for months on end is so draining,” said Ann Dunn, director of Oakland Animal Services, a city-run shelter in the San Francisco Bay Area. “And every year we just know it’s going to get harder.”
Across the United States, summer is the height of “kitten season,” typically defined as the warm-weather months between spring and fall during which a cat becomes most fertile. For over a decade, animal shelters across the country have noted kitten season starting earlier and lasting longer. Some experts say the effects of climate change, such as milder winters and an earlier start to spring, may be to blame for the uptick in feline birth rates.
This past February, Dunn’s shelter held a clinic for spaying and neutering outdoor cats. Although kitten season in Northern California doesn’t typically kick off until May, organizers found that over half of the female cats were already pregnant. “It’s terrifying,” Dunn said. “It just keeps getting earlier and going later.”
Unweaned kittens rest inside terrariums at the Best Friends Animal Society shelter in April 2017 in Mission Hills, California. A chart helps workers keep track of their behavior, weight, and care schedule. Patrick T. Fallon / The Washington Post via Getty Images
Cats reproduce when females begin estrus, more commonly known as “going into heat,” during which hormones and behavior changes signal she’s ready to mate. Cats can go into heat several times a year, with each cycle lasting up to two weeks. But births typically go up between the months of April and October. While it’s well established that lengthening daylight triggers a cat’s estrus, the effect of rising temperatures on kitten season isn’t yet understood.
One theory is that milder winters may mean cats have the resources to begin mating sooner. “No animal is going to breed unless they can survive,” said Christopher Lepczyk, an ecologist at Auburn University and prominent researcher of free-ranging cats. Outdoor cats’ food supply may also be increasing, as some prey, such as small rodents, may have population booms in warmer weather themselves. Kittens may also be more likely to survive as winters become less harsh. “I would argue that temperature really matters,” he said.
Others, like Peter J. Wolf, a senior strategist at the Best Friends Animal Society, think the increase comes down to visibility rather than anything biological. As the weather warms, Wolf said people may be getting out more and noticing kittens earlier in the year than before. Then they bring them into shelters, resulting in rescue groups feeling like kitten season is starting earlier.
Regardless of the exact mechanism, having a large number of feral cats around means trouble for more than just animal shelters. Cats are apex predators that can wreak havoc on local biodiversity. Research shows that outdoor cats on islands have already caused or contributed to the extinction of an estimated 33 species. Wild cats pose an outsized threat to birds, which make up half their diet. On Hawaiʻi, known as a bird extinction capital of the world, cats are the most devastating predators of wildlife. “We know that cats are an invasive, environmental threat,” said Lepczyk, who has published papers proposing management policies for outdoor cats.
Stray cats congregate on the grounds of Hawaiian Sugar in Puʻunēnē, Hawaiʻi Bonnie Jo Mount / The Washington Post via Getty Images
Scientists, conservationists, and cat advocates all agree unchecked outdoor cat populations are a problem, but they remain deeply divided on solutions. While some conservationists propose the targeted killing of cats, known as culling, cat populations have been observed to bounce back quickly, and a single female cat and her offspring can produce at least 100 descendants, if not thousands, in just seven years.
Although sterilization protocols such as “trap, neuter, and release” are favored by many cat rescue organizations, Lepczyk said it’s almost impossible to do it effectively, in part because of how freely the animals roam and how quickly they procreate. Without homes or sanctuaries after sterilization, returning cats outside means they may have a low quality of life, spread disease, and continue to harm wildlife. “No matter what technique you use, if you don’t stop the flow of new cats into the landscape, it’s not gonna matter,” said Lepczyk.
Rescue shelters, already under strain from resource and veterinary shortages, are scrambling to confront their new reality. While some release materials to help the community identify when outdoor kittens need intervention, others focus on recruiting for foster volunteer programs, which become essential caring for kittens who need around-the-clock-care.
“As the population continues to explode, how do we address all these little lives that need our help?” Dunn said. “We’re giving this everything we have.”
This story was originally published by Canary Media.
You might consider heat pumps to be a tantalizing climate solution (they are) and one you could adopt yourself (plenty have). But perhaps you’ve held off on getting one, wondering how much of a difference they really make if a dirty grid is supplying the electricity you’re using to power them — that is, a grid whose electricity is generated at least in part by fossil gas, coal, or oil.
That’s certainly the case for most U.S. households: While the grid mix is improving, it’s still far from clean. In 2023, renewable energy sources provided just 21 percent of U.S. electricity generation, with carbon-free nuclear energy coming in at 19 percent. The other 60 percent of power came from burning fossil fuels.
So do electric heat pumps really lower emissions if they run on dirty grid power?
The answer is an emphatic yes. Even on a carbon-heavy diet, heat pumps eliminate tons of emissions annually compared to other heating systems.
The latest study to hammer this point home was published in Joule last month by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The team modeled the entire U.S. housing stock and found that, over the appliance’s expected lifetime of 16 years, switching to a heat-pump heater/AC slashes emissions in every one of the contiguous 48 states.
In fact, heat pumps reduce carbon pollution even if the process of cleaning up the U.S. grid moves slower than experts expect. The NREL team used six different future scenarios for the grid, from aggressive decarbonization (95 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035) to sluggish (only 50 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035, in the event that renewables wind up costing more than their current trajectories forecast). They found that depending on the scenario and level of efficiency, heat pumps lower household annual energy emissions on average by 36 percent to 64 percent — or 2.5 to 4.4 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year per housing unit.
That’s a staggering amount of emissions. For context, preventing 2.5 metric tons of CO2 emissions is equivalent to not burning 2,800 pounds of coal. Or not driving for half a year. Or switching to a vegan diet for 14 months. And at the high end of the study’s range, 4.4 metric tons of CO2 is almost equivalent to the emissions from a roundtrip flight from New York City to Tokyo (4.6 metric tons).
Eric Wilson, senior research engineer at NREL and lead author of the study, told me, “I often hear people saying, ‘Oh, you should wait to put in a heat pump because the grid is still dirty.’” But that’s faulty logic. “It’s better to switch now rather than later — and not lock in another 20 years of a gas furnace or boiler.”
Emissions savings tend to be higher in states with colder winters and heaters that run on fuel oil, such as Maine, according to the study. (Maine seems to be one step ahead of the researchers: Heat pumps have proven so popular there that the state already blew past its heat-pump adoption goal two years ahead of schedule.)
A dirty grid, then, doesn’t cancel out a heat pump’s climate benefits. But heat pumps can generate emissions in the same way standard ACs do: by leaking refrigerant, the chemicals that enable these appliances to move around heat. Though it’s being phased down, the HVAC standard refrigerant R-410A is 2,088 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2, so even small leaks have an outsize impact.
Added emissions from heat-pump refrigerant leaks barely make a dent, however, given the emissions heat pumps avoid, the NREL team found. Typical leakage rates of R-410A increase emissions on average by only 0.07 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per year, shaving the overall savings of 2.5 metric tons by just 3 percent, Wilson said.
A 2023 analysis from climate think tank RMI further backs up heat pumps’ climate bona fides. Across the 48 continental states, RMI found that replacing a gas furnace with an efficient heat pump saves emissions not only cumulatively across the appliance’s lifetime, but also in the very first year it’s installed. RMI estimated that emissions prevented in that first year were 13 percent to 72 percent relative to gas-furnace emissions, depending on the state. (Canary Media is an independent affiliate of RMI.)
Both the RMI and NREL studies focused on air-source heat pumps, which, in cold weather, pull heat from the outdoor air and can be three to four times as efficient as gas furnaces. But ground-source heat pumps can be more than five times as efficient compared to gas furnaces — and thus unlock even greater greenhouse-gas reductions, according to RMI.
How much could switching to a heat pump lower your home’s carbon emissions? For a high-level estimate, NREL put out an interactive dashboard. In the “states” tab, you can filter down to your state, building type and heating fuel. For instance, based on a scenario of moderate grid decarbonization in my state of Colorado, a single-family home that swaps out a gas furnace for a heat pump could slash emissions by a whopping 6 metric tons of CO2.
One final takeaway Wilson shared: If every American home with gas, oil, or inefficient electric-resistance heating were to swap it right now for heat-pump heating, the emissions of the entire U.S. economy would shrink by 5 percent to 9 percent. That’s how powerful a decarbonizing tool heat pumps are.
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.
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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.
Caribou walk in the foreground of a glacier on July 12, 2013 in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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.
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.
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.”
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.
“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.”
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.
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.”
