Transcript

5.7.26 · Science Show KY

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Radioized Diary of Science and Nature. I'll be
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a reader. My name's Kelly Taylor. I'll have some stories
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on science and nature. But first a reminder that RADIOI
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is a reading service intended for people who are blind
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or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
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printed material. Our first article today is going to come
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from the Washington Post. Why the odds keep rising for
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the strongest El Nino in a century? Dated May sixth,
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Chances are rising that an El Nino expected to form
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soon could become one of the most powerful such events
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on record, according to new data released this week. The
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latest outlook from the European Center for Medium Range Weather
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Forecasts shows water temperatures in a key region of the
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central Equatorial Pacific Ocean potentially reaching three degrees celsius above
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average late in the year. That could approach even surpass
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the current records set in eighteen seventy seven and twenty
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fifteen and exceed the threshold for a super El Nino.
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Quote confidence is clearly shifting higher on potentially the biggest
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Alnino event since the eighteen seventies, wrote Paul Roundee, professor
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of atmospheric science at the State University of New York
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in Albany. Records for El Nino began around eighteen fifty.
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It's the third consecutive month that multiple models have predicted
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that a potentially record breaking al Nino could drive global
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temperatures to new hives and shift patterns of droughts, floods, heat, humidity,
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and sea ice across the planet. The coming conditions could
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have significant consequences for agriculture, health, and the economy across
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the planet. The odds for a powerful al Nino were
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boosted by a rare triplet cyclone pattern in the Pacific
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last month, which caused a record breaking burst of wind
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that created a freight train of warm water beneath the
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ocean's surface that's reached seven degrees celsius above average. That's
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a major anomaly in the ocean, which typically takes a
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long time to warm up and cool down. Quote al
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Nino patterns are correlated with food shortages, water impacts, and
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even civil conflict in tropical countries, said climate scientist Katherine Haho.
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So these natural patterns of variability, as short lived as
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they are, still have a profound impact on human society
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and human well being. Elnino is gradually beginning to affect
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weather patterns, with NOAH data suggesting the phenomenon may fully
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form by July. These are some of the weather impacts
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predicted to unfold through November that are at least partly
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connected to the developing Alnino first tropical storm and monsoon activity.
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Reduced hurricane activevity in the Atlantic Ocean and possible drought
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in the Caribbean Islands. Increased hurricane and typhoon risk in
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the Pacific Ocean, including Hawaii Guam in parts of Eastern Asia.
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Reduced rainfall from the monsoon in central and northern India,
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as well as elevated odds for extreme heat, which could
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cause droughts that impact agricultural production next droughts and floods.
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Increased chances for developing droughts in portions of Central Africa, Australia,
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New Zealand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and some South Pacific islands.
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Central America and stretches of northern South America, including northern Brazil,
3:37
particularly later in the year. Elevated risks for heavy rain
3:42
that could cause flooding in parts of Peru and Ecuador,
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southern Brazil, parts of northern and Eastern Africa, the Middle East,
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the Equatorial Pacific, as well as the southern United States,
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especially later in the year. Next, heat and humidity. Above
3:58
average summer and fall temperature in the western US, possibly
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coming with unusual humidity, downpours and tropical storm remnants in
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the Southwest and inter Mountain West, but dryness and possible
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drought in the Northwest. Warmer than average summer temperatures favored
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across the southeast and mid Atlantic. Next, heat waves, a
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higher frequency of heat waves across large parts of South America,
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the western, Central and southern US, Africa, Europe, parts of
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the Middle East, India and eventually Indonesia and Australia. And
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record temperatures. New global temperature records, especially in twenty twenty seven,
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probably breaking records set in twenty twenty four. The strongest
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Alninio events almost always cause a record warm year. That's
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because Alnino releases heat from the ocean into the atmosphere,
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and then global wind patterns and weather systems act like
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conveyor belts moving that heat around the world. And in
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twenty twenty six there's extra heat compared to the past.
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This could contribute to milder winter temperatures in the US,
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as well as big storms along the West Coast and
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the drought stricken South. As El Nino's impacts reach a
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peak from the end of the year into early twenty
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twenty seven, Climate scientist Zeke Housefather wrote that twenty twenty
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six is on track to become the planet's second warmest
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your own record. The stronger El Nino becomes, the higher
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the chances will be for a record warm year, especially
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in twenty twenty seven. Because air temperature increases lag slightly
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behind El Nino's development and peak, there's currently a seventy
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three percent chance that twenty twenty seven will become the
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planet's warmest your own record. Meanwhile, worldwide interest in the
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super all Nino phenomenon appears to be at a high.
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Since two thousand and three, the term has been included
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in one hundred and forty nine research papers available on
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the American Meteorological Society website, a number that may rise
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as the number or the effect of another potential super
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Anino takes hold. Now turning to the BBC Science Focus magazine,
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from eighty three to fifteen thousand years old, the longest
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living animals on Earth, dated May second, time is a
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bit of a confusing concept. For example, Einstein explained how
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time is relative and objects experience it differently depending on
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how fast they move. A bit to get your head around.
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Even so, many animals around the world have managed to
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experience more than what would seem to be their fair
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share of time, living very long, incredible lives and defying
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the odds. But what is the longest living animal in
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the world. Scientists have spent years trying to find the
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secrets to a long life, and many of the species
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on this list may offer clues as to how we
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might be able to live healthier and prolonged lives in
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the future. So join us as we look at some
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of the longest living things in the world. Jeane Kalmant,
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recognized to be the oldest person in the world, lived
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in amazing one hundred twenty two years in one hundred
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and sixty four days. She was born in Are de
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France in eighteen seventy five and famously claimed to have
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met Vincent van Goud, describing him in less than glowing terms.
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Kalmont attributed her long life to a lack of stress
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and a good sense of humor. She didn't make any
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special effort to maintain a healthy lifestyle, and she even
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smoked after every meal until eventually quitting at the age
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of one hundred and seventeen. She died in nineteen ninety seven,
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having outlived her only daughter and grandchild, who had both
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died at a much younger age. Glass sponges or one
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of the longest living organisms on earth. Despite their delicate appearance,
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it is estimated that they can live up to fifteen
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thousand years, and although relatively rare, they can be found
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in every ocean in the world, usually at depths of
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below four hundred and fifty meters. What makes them stand
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out is their unique ability to generate electrical impulses across
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their bodies. Their flagella, tiny hairs which trap bacteria in
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the water, will stop beating if they sense danger. But
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unlike other types of sea sponges, glass sponges do not
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contract or change shape when stimulated. The longest living bird
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on record is Cookie, a male pink cockatoo who lived
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in captivity at Brookfield Zoo, Chicago. In twenty fourteen, Cookie
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was recognized by the Guinness World Records as the oldest
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parrot in the world. At that time. He had reached
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the age of eighty one and had been retired from
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public display to preserve his health. Sadly, he passed away
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in twenty sixteen at the grand old age of eighty three. Incredibly,
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Cookie outlived the next longest living pink cook about fifty
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two years. The longest living rodent is the naked mole rat,
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which is truly a remarkable rodent. It is so hardy
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that it can survive for eighteen minutes without oxygen, and
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is also resistant to many types of cancer. Another factor
9:19
adding to its longevity is that it lives deep in
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underground burrows, meaning that it has few natural predators. Studies
9:26
have shown that mole rat's risk of dye doesn't increase
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with age as quickly as other mammals. Thanks to some
9:32
amazing genetics, their cells reproduced more accurately and are less
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likely to be damaged. In twenty twenty, it was reported
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that one male individual turned thirty seven years old, which
9:43
makes it easily the longest living rodent on Earth. Ocean
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quay hogs, which is a clam, are the longest living
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animals on Earth. One individual, found off the coast of
9:56
Iceland in two thousand and six, was found to be
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an incredible five one hundred and seven years old by
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scientists at Bangor University. It was dubbed Ming by journalists
10:07
in reference to the Ming dynasty, who were the rulers
10:10
of China when this clam was born. However, in Iceland,
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this clam is known as hefrin, a feminine name which
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roughly means mystery of the ocean. Guayhogs like this can
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be dated in very much the same way as trees.
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Every year a band appears on the shell of the clam,
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so counting these bands reveals its age. The longest living
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tortoise is the Aldabra giant tortoise. The oldest was a
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male called Adweita and was thought to be two hundred
10:42
and fifty five years old when he died at Alapour
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Zoological Garden in Kolkata. Adweita was thought to have hatched
10:53
in seventeen fifty and had lived a solitary life at
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the zoo for over one hundred years. As its name suggests,
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the Alda giant tortoise comes from the ald Atoll in
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the Seychelles, home to approximately one hundred thousand of his kind.
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This is the largest concentration of tortoises anywhere in the world.
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The longest living fish is the greenland shark and the
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longest living shark species on planet Earth, but because it
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is so different from other sharks, it is much harder
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to date. Most other sharks have growth bands that appear
11:28
on their fin spines in the same way that a
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tree has growth rings. However, a greenland shark has no
11:34
hard tissue in their body and does not grow such bands.
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The only way to correctly estimate this shark's age is
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through carbon dating, which is not an especially accurate measurement.
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Using this process, scientists managed to date one female at
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an age between two hundred and fifty two and five
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hundred and twelve years old. The cold waters that they
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inhabit mean that they likely have very slow metabolisms, which
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could account for their longevity as well as their's slow
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swim speeds. The longest living dog, Bobby Bobby as Bobi,
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a purebred Raffeiro dough Alentejo dog, hit an incredible thirty
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one years of age before shuffling off this mortal coil
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in October twenty twenty three. Earlier that same year, his
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age had been certified by Guinness World records as the
12:25
longest living dog ever, surpassing the previous record of twenty
12:29
nine years and five months. However, claims that this age
12:32
might be incorrect have since come to light. Raf dough
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Alentejos are native to Portugal and are known to be
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calm in nature and make great guard dogs. They are
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a large breed with big heads and a dense coat
12:48
that keeps them warm. Now turning to New Scientist magazine,
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deforestation could trigger Amazon tipping point in the twenty thirties.
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This is dated May six. Destruction of rainforest for cattle
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ranching is making the Amazon biome more vulnerable to irreversible collapse,
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which could occur within decades if deforestation continues. A landmark
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twenty twenty two study on tipping points found the Amazon
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would likely suffer widespread dieback at global warming of three
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and a half degrees celsius and potentially as low as
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two degrees celsius. That's worrying, as estimates put Earth on
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track to warm by about two point six degrees to
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two point seven degrees above pre industrial temperatures by twenty
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one hundred. But the research didn't include deforestation, which has
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already resulted in the loss of at least fifteen percent
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of the Amazon. Nico Wondering at the Potsdam Institute for
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Climate Impact Research in Germany and his colleagues have now
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modeled Amazon dieback with scenarios involving both rising global temperatures
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and severe deforestation until twenty fifty. If total forest loss
14:08
increases to twenty two percent, the Amazon could suffer widespread
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dieback with as little as one and a half degrees
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celsius of global warming. The world has already experienced one
14:19
point three to one point four degrees celsius of warming
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and could hit one point five degrees by the end
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of this decade. Deforestation slowed last year, but if it resurges,
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the Amazon could cross a tipping point as soon as
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twenty thirty one. The timing and extent of dieback predicted
14:38
by the model varied depending on how much carbon humanity emits,
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with deforestation rates of twenty two to twenty eight percent
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leading to sixty two to seventy seven percent of the
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Amazon biome becoming grassland, savannah or scrubby forest. Quote, we
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found that there's this about two degree reduction of the
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critical global warming threshold when deforestation is considered says Wondering.
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The reason why deforestation is so crucial is that it
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undermines this atmospheric moisture recycling feedback. Vast atmospheric rivers carry
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moisture from the Atlantic Ocean across the Amazon. After rain
15:20
falls on one part of the forest, the trees transpire
15:24
some of that moisture back into the air, which carries
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it to another part to repeat the process. Up to
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fifty percent of the rainfall in the western Amazon is
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recycled from the forest itself, but cutting down areas of
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the forest reduces this moisture recycling and kills off other
15:41
areas downwind, which kills off further areas in a domino effect. Quote.
15:47
It only needs a little bit of a push from
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global warming to make these cascading transitions possible, says Wonderling,
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while concerning the findings are based on a high deforestation
15:59
rate that would eat in areas that are currently protected.
16:02
According to David Armstrong McKay at the University of Sussex
16:05
in the UK, Brazil lost more than twenty eight thousand
16:10
square kilometers of primary forest in twenty twenty four, equaling
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its previous record, but it nearly had that rate in
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twenty twenty five, and President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva
16:23
has promised to halt Amazon deforestation by twenty thirty, achieving
16:27
that would probably avoid the tipping point even if the
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world keeps warming. Quote stopping all deforestation is probably optimistic,
16:36
Obstrong McKay says, but even if there is some deforestation continuing,
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it probably won't beat this worst case scenario modeled here.
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All the same, Brazil still lost about a half a
16:48
percent of its primary forest in twenty twenty five, and
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for the past two years, two thirds of forest destruction
16:54
has been due to wildfires, which typically start when farmers
16:58
burn vegetation and default rested areas, but then escape into
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the neighboring forest. Once almost unheard of, wildfires can now
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spread because the rainforest is hotter and drier, conditions that
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will be worsened by the aninio climate phase later this year.
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As a result, the study may be underestimating the vulnerability
17:17
of the Amazon. Quote We're getting these much bigger fires,
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says Dominic Spracklin at the University of Leeds in UK.
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That is worrying if we have moved into a new
17:28
kind of regime where that can happen more and more
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in quote, Already, the Amazon has shifted from a carbon
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sink to a carbon source, and widespread dieback could emit
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enough carbon to heat the globe by as much as
17:41
point two percent c. It would also destroy the world's
17:45
biggest store of terrestrial biodiversity. Quote. We really want to
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be backing away from that threshold rather than creeping towards it,
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says Spracklin. Now we're going to turn to NPR, and
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the headline reads why this tribe is buying up hundreds
18:04
of acres of farmland and flooding it. This is dated
18:07
May third. Scott Boyd walks through the deep mud where
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the Stillaguamish River empties into Puget Sound, an arm of
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the Pacific Ocean. This flood prone river mouth north of Seattle,
18:24
changed dramatically in October when the still Aguamish tribe removed
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two miles of earth and levee. The ridge of dirt
18:33
kept the river and the tides from spreading onto the
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nearby farmland. Once a giant excavator bit into the levee
18:40
to breach it, the tribe welcomed tidewater onto the land
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for the first time in over a century. Quote before
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it was a dairy operation, and now it's a big
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tidal marsh, Boyd, a still tribal member and fisheries manager, says,
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while looking out at the new two hundred and thirty
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acre wetland. Tidal marshes are crucial nurseries for young Chinook
19:02
salmon and a focal point for efforts to bring these
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fish back from the brink of extinction. The Stillagomish tribe
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has been buying riverfront land in its traditional territory and
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removing levies to turn farmland into wetland with the hope
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of restoring chinook. Boyd's tribe of about four hundred people
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only gained federal recognition in nineteen seventy six, more than
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a century after tribal leaders signed the Treaty of Point
19:27
Elliott with the US government in eighteen fifty five. Quote.
19:32
Our official reservation is pretty small, I want to say,
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less than one hundred acres, Boyd said, and it wasn't
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granted to us until maybe ten years ago. Quote. Over
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the past fifteen years, the Stilaguomish tribe has purchased two
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thousand acres of land for fish and wildlife habitat under
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the eighteen fifty five treaty, the Stillagomish and other Puget
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Sound tribes gave up almost all of their land, but
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kept their rights to fish and hunt. Quote. It is
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a bitter It is a bit of a bitter pill
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to swallow to buy back the land that we essentially
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traded for the resource the fish. But it's what we
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have to do to get things back on track. Boyd says.
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What the tribe wants to get back on track is salmon.
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Decades of environmental damage have left many West Coast salmon
20:16
runs on the brink of extinction. Chinook salmon, the largest
20:19
and most prized of salmon, is a federally threatened species
20:22
in Puget Sound. In twenty twenty five, so few chinook
20:26
salmon returned to the Stillagomish River that the entire tribe
20:30
was only allowed to catch twenty six fish. Quote the salmon.
20:34
It has always been important to our people, to the tribe,
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to our way of life, Boyd says. These habitat projects
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are the best bang for our buck right now. Depending
20:44
on the tide and the river level, transversing the new
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wetland can require anything from a small boat to tall
20:51
boots narrow water channels snake through the mudflats. Whole trees
20:56
uprooted and carried down river by recent floods, lie sideways
20:59
in the mud. A cloud of shorebirds erupts after probing
21:03
the muddy ground for food. Hundreds of birds called dunlins
21:07
wheel above the freshly remade landscape, moving in tight formation
21:11
like a pulsing living cloud. Watch these dunlins Stilguamish tribe
21:18
biologist Jason Griffith says it's a visual symphony. The shorebirds
21:24
numbers hint at the ecological benefits. Is new wetland known
21:27
as zis A Bay two. I want to spell that
21:32
zis a b A two could bring named for Zisa Bah,
21:40
I guess zis Aba, a nineteenth century chief of a
21:44
Stillaguamish village once located just south of the river mouth.
21:49
Zis Aba two is the second of three large marshes
21:52
the tribe is restoring in the area. Quote. Now the
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river can connect to its floodplain like it hasn't in
21:57
one hundred and forty years, Griffith said. To help natural
22:01
forces rebuild the marsh more quickly, restoration crews dug channels
22:05
into the farmland before breaching the levee, they found old middens,
22:09
piles of discarded fire charred clam shells from up to
22:12
fifteen hundred years ago, signs of long human occupation. The
22:17
landscape morphed again in December when floodwaters tore through the area,
22:21
scouring some land away and delivering sediment and uprooted trees
22:25
from upriver, helping inputs for the nascent wetland. That month,
22:31
a series of intense storms deluged Washington and Oregon, causing
22:34
flooding that forced thousands of people to evacuate. Washington Governor
22:39
Bob Ferguson called the December floods the costliest natural disaster
22:43
in the state's history. In April, the Federal Emergency Management
22:48
Agency FEMA approved a major Disaster declaration to help people
22:53
in the two states recover from that flooding, though it
22:55
denied Ferguson's request for funding for projects to reduce the
22:59
damage from future flooding. Tribal officials say their habitat projects
23:04
will help people as well as salmon the next time
23:07
floodwaters rise. Now we'll go to National Geographic We're one
23:14
step closer to understanding the sperm whale alphabet. That alphabet
23:18
is in quotes. This is from April fourteenth. When sperm
23:24
whales communicate with each other, they produce cliques in patterns
23:28
that may parallel our own system of language, according to
23:31
a study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.
23:37
The research is the latest to come out from the
23:39
multidisciplinary group Project SETI that's CETI Cetacean Translation Initiative and
23:47
its founder and president, David Gruber, a marine biologist and
23:50
National Geographic Explorer, who co authored the new study. Seti's
23:55
previous scientific findings, aided by artificial intelligence, have already revealed
23:59
a wrkingly intricate a system of sperm whale communication, including
24:04
groups of cliques called codas, with elements that can function
24:08
like human vowels quote in vast communication systems. Humans have
24:13
evolved vowels in almost all human languages. Now we're seeing
24:17
that sperm whales have independently evolved a very vowel like system,
24:21
and they're using it in similar ways, says Kruber. To
24:25
decode these vowel like patterns, Gruber work closely with Project
24:28
seti's linguistics lead Gasper Bigus, who has studied ancient languages
24:34
like Hittite, Tokarian, and Sanskrit. Now his focus is on
24:38
sperm whales, part of the group of marine mammals known
24:40
scientifically as cetaceans. For Begus, the process is similar to
24:45
studying dead languages. You're just trying to connect with these
24:49
animals that are not thousands of years apart, but are
24:51
different environments apart, oceans apart. Through understanding sperm whale vocalizations,
24:57
Project SETI hopes to inspire the public and policymakers to
25:01
push for legal protections, similar to how the nineteen seventies
25:05
Save the Whales movement was inspired by humpback whale songs.
25:09
When sperm whales communicate as they roll to the surface
25:13
or in preparation for a hunt, they produce rhythmic pulses
25:16
of clicks called codas. In twenty twenty four, said he
25:20
discovered that these rhythmic sequences form a kind of phonetic alphabet,
25:24
a rich system of sounds the researchers likened to a
25:27
form of Morse code. The research showed the whales can
25:31
combine codas depending on context, and even tweak them through rhythm,
25:36
tempo expressive changes in timing and by adding additional clicks.
25:41
An analysis published last November revealed yet more complexity. Sperm
25:45
whales communicate very slowly compared to us. Their world is
25:49
in general more unhurried. Their hearts can slow to us
25:52
a few beats per minute, but when their codas are
25:55
sped up with the silences removed, they contain elements that
25:59
function like humans. So far, two whale vowels have been
26:03
identified by Project SETI, distinct sounds that function similarly to
26:09
our A and I. These vowels sometimes rise and fall
26:15
in a similar way to human diphthongs, a term that
26:18
refers to how vowels subtly change from one sound to another.
26:22
The word cow, for example, starts with an ah sound
26:25
that glides seamlessly into a ooh vowel like sound cow.
26:32
In their latest study, Bigus and his team analyze the
26:35
structures within in between these vowels and looked for any
26:38
parallels with human language. The researchers used statistical analysis and
26:43
a machine learning algorithm to purse through over eleven hundred
26:47
sperm whale codas recorded through hydrophones in a wild population
26:51
of fifteen females in calves off the Caribbean island of Dominica.
26:58
Part of the analysis focused on the codas of four
27:01
sperm whales at wood Fork, TBB and Pinchy. A particularly
27:06
vocal grandma. She's very chatty, she's very structured, says because
27:10
she's the best. In some human languages, certain vowels are
27:14
more likely to be paired with different ones. Slovenia has
27:17
two E vowels, and one is normally used when the
27:20
pitch is higher. Meanwhile, in one common whale coda, two
27:24
spice spaced clicks are followed by three in succession. The
27:28
team found half of these click sequences contained A code
27:31
of oowels and half contained I code of owels. In
27:34
other sequences they analyzed, the A codas were more common.
27:38
The whales used different physical mechanisms to produce their clicks
27:42
and vowel like acoustics. If these vowels were just random
27:46
sounds resulting from click production, those patterns wouldn't appear. The
27:49
studies authors argue that suggests there is a complex hierarchical
27:54
hierarchical order in this system. Says Vegus. We have to
28:00
stop right there on this article, because that's all the
28:03
time we have for Diary of Science and Nature this week.
28:08
Thanks for listening. Stay tuned for further programming on RADIOI