Transcript

10.1.26 · Science Show KY

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Radio Eye's Diary of Science and Nature. Your
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Speaker 1: reader is Kelly Taylor. I'll have articles on the topics
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Speaker 1: of science and nature, but first, a reminder, Radio Eye
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Speaker 1: is a reading service intended for people who are blind
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Speaker 1: or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
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Speaker 1: printed material. Our first article is going to come from Vox, V-O-X.
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Speaker 1: The headline is, This Weather Threat, costs us billions, and
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Speaker 1: it's about to get worse. From September 27th. At a
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Speaker 1: specialized cold lab in Boulder, Colorado, where indoor temperatures hover
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Speaker 1: around minus four degrees Fahrenheit, atmospheric researcher Anthony Bernal Ayala
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Speaker 1: slices hailstones with a bandsaw revealing layers of icy growth
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Speaker 1: like the rings of a tree. These frozen rings, clear
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Speaker 1: or cloudy, thick or thin, indicate the conditions in which
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Speaker 1: the hail formed. A clear layer signals the water froze slowly,
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Speaker 1: while a cloudy layer means it happened quickly, trapping air bubbles.
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Speaker 1: Bernal Ayala then analyzes the crystalline structures, particles, and isotopes
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Speaker 1: preserved in these layers. Quote, all that information can tell
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Speaker 1: you a wonderful story of how the hailstone was growing,
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Speaker 1: but nobody, not until now, was able to tap into
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Speaker 1: that history, says Bernal Ayala, who works for Atmospheric and
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Speaker 1: Environmental Research, part of the Janus Research Group. Bernal Ayala's research,
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Speaker 1: conducted at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, is part
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Speaker 1: of a historic effort to study one of the costliest
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Speaker 1: weather hazards. Researchers hope their findings will help protect lives
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Speaker 1: and property from the stones that careen to Earth, battering roofs,
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Speaker 1: pummeling crops, and pockmarking cars. From 2023 to 2025, annual
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Speaker 1: severe thunderstorm losses exceeded $ 50 billion nationwide, according to the
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Speaker 1: Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety. More than double
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Speaker 1: the losses seen just a decade earlier. Hail accounted for
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Speaker 1: 60% to 80% of the damage. In Colorado, one of
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Speaker 1: the country's most hail-prone states, hail, not wildfire, is the
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Speaker 1: main factor driving up insurance premiums. And researchers expect larger,
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Speaker 1: more damaging hailstones to become more common with climate change. Quote,
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Speaker 1: it's going to just keep getting costlier and costlier, says
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Speaker 1: Bernal Ayala. Even basic questions about hail have been notoriously
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Speaker 1: hard to study, but a long-awaited resurgence in research, including
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Speaker 1: the first major U.S. field campaign to study hail in
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Speaker 1: more than 40 years, could help change that. ICECHIP, the
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Speaker 1: In-Situ Collaborative Experiment for the Collection of Hail in the Plains,
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Speaker 1: aims to improve forecasts, make warnings more precise, and help
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Speaker 1: communities better prepare. It received $ 11 million in funding from
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Speaker 1: the National Science Foundation in 2024, just before deep cuts
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Speaker 1: hit the foundation in 2025. For six weeks in spring 2025,
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Speaker 1: about 100 scientists and university students chased hailstorms across the
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Speaker 1: central plains and the Front Range from the Canadian to
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Speaker 1: the Mexican border, using radar trucks to track storms and
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Speaker 1: drones to take aerial footage. Researchers photographed hail with high-speed cameras,
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Speaker 1: measured its impact with a tool called a disdrometer, recorded
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Speaker 1: hail's distribution and size based on its imprints on foam pads,
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Speaker 1: captured hailstones in specialized funnels, and crushed hail to test
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Speaker 1: its strength. Scientists from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology also
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Speaker 1: used balloons to release golf ball-sized sensors into storms. Once aloft,
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Speaker 1: each hail-like probe collected data on how fast it was
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Speaker 1: traveling and whether ice was growing on it. A microphone
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Speaker 1: even recorded water droplets and hailstones hitting it. This has
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Speaker 1: really been the first time where we've been able to
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Speaker 1: do a real comprehensive look at hail on the ground,
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Speaker 1: hail aloft, the storm itself, the environment around the storm,
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Speaker 1: just everything all at once, said Becky Adams-Seelan, IceChip's lead
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Speaker 1: investigator and a principal scientist at Atmospheric and Environmental Research.
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Speaker 1: IceChip's samples were packed into 26 cooler-sized boxes and brought
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Speaker 1: to NCAR. This internationally renowned hub for weather and climate
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Speaker 1: research has been used to study hail for decades. In
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Speaker 1: one of its last major campaigns in the 1970s, the U.S.
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Speaker 1: investigated Soviet claims that it could suppress hail. Researchers say
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Speaker 1: there's no other U.S. lab like it. The backup plan
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Speaker 1: to store ice chips samples involved using a walk-in freezer
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Speaker 1: from a fast food restaurant. Now, NCAR's own future is uncertain.
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Speaker 1: In late 2025, the Trump administration said it would dissolve
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Speaker 1: the center and transfer its work out of state. The
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Speaker 1: University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, UCAR, which manages NCAR, sued
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Speaker 1: the administration in March, alleging that it's targeting NCAR to
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Speaker 1: punish Colorado for retaining its mail-in voting. and because Governor
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Speaker 1: Jared Polis initially refused to release former Mesa County Clerk
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Speaker 1: Tina Peters, a 2020 election denier, in prison for breaching
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Speaker 1: election security and undermining election integrity. In June, a federal
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Speaker 1: judge temporarily blocked the White House from dismantling NCAR. The
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Speaker 1: government has until September 30th to respond to the lawsuit.
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Speaker 1: I can't even quantify the impact that it would have
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Speaker 1: to our community if we lost NCAR. Victor Gassini, professor
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Speaker 1: of meteorology at Northern Illinois University, says. They are the
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Speaker 1: beating heart. Previous research has predicted climate change's effects on hail,
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Speaker 1: noting that warmer temperatures could melt smaller hailstones before they land,
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Speaker 1: but also fuel stronger updrafts, keeping hailstones airborne longer and
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Speaker 1: allowing them to grow bigger, enabling the most damaging hail
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Speaker 1: to become more common. A record-setting stone recovered in Yuma County,
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Speaker 1: Colorado in 2023 measured more than five inches across. That year,
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Speaker 1: the state logged 176 reports of hail two inches or greater,
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Speaker 1: surpassing the previous record of 91 in 2018. Scientists say
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Speaker 1: it's difficult to know how much of the rise in
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Speaker 1: damage is due to the increase in large hail versus
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Speaker 1: the increased development in hail hotspots. The connection between a
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Speaker 1: rapidly growing human footprint and higher insured losses has been
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Speaker 1: dubbed the expanding bullseye effect. Ghinseni, a principal ice chip investigator,
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Speaker 1: cites the development boom east of the Front Range along
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Speaker 1: Colorado's Interstate 25 corridor, which has grown explosively in recent decades.
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Speaker 1: The population of the Fort Collins metro area alone has
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Speaker 1: doubled since 1990 to around 375,000 residents. This is happening
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Speaker 1: across the western U.S. as previously rural or open areas
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Speaker 1: become densely populated, increasingly expensive targets for hail. Colorado is
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Speaker 1: the poster child for what I expect the next 25
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Speaker 1: years to look like for hail, Gensini said. In 2019,
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Speaker 1: Fort Collins became one of the first cities to adopt
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Speaker 1: hail-specific roofing requirements for new builds and remodels. Marcus Coldiron,
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Speaker 1: the city's chief building official, said it was partly in
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Speaker 1: response to all the shingles and roofing materials taken to
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Speaker 1: the landfill after a catastrophic hailstorm in 2018. It's still
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Speaker 1: unclear how well the requirements are working. Coldiron said fewer
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Speaker 1: permits were being issued for roof replacements and fewer shingles
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Speaker 1: were going to the dump. However, Fort Collins also hasn't
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Speaker 1: experienced a hailstorm as devastating as the one that hit
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Speaker 1: in 2018. A growing number of front-range communities now require
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Speaker 1: impact-resistant shingles on their building codes, and Colorado legislators recently
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Speaker 1: passed a law offering grants to residents who install more
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Speaker 1: resilient roofing. IceChips researchers are also investigating how they can
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Speaker 1: improve building materials as billion-dollar losses from single storms become
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Speaker 1: more common. The dollars are simply building up so fast,
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Speaker 1: said Ian Giamonco, a lead research meteorologist at the Insurance
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Speaker 1: Institute for Business and Home Safety. Quote, we're still trying
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Speaker 1: to understand how do we get the best materials onto roofs,
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Speaker 1: onto people's homes, onto businesses, to actually start shaving off
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Speaker 1: those losses, end quote. Now we turn to a new
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Speaker 1: scientist and this article's headline reads, the collapse of the
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Speaker 1: AMOC would be catastrophic. How will we know when it's coming?
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Speaker 1: On a sunny evening in July, a research ship called
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Speaker 1: the Sir David Attenborough was working near the Sorgenfri Glacier
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Speaker 1: in southeastern Greenland when a kilometer-long wall of craggy, bulging
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Speaker 1: ice collapsed into the fjord. The scientists on deck watched
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Speaker 1: in stunned silence as an estimated 18 million tons of
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Speaker 1: ice slowly flipped over, sending up vast plumes of spray.
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Speaker 1: Iceberg calving on this scale was once relatively rare, but
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Speaker 1: it has become commonplace in recent years as Earth warms,
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Speaker 1: and that acceleration could have catastrophic impacts that extend far
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Speaker 1: beyond Greenland. It is weakening a system of ocean currents
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Speaker 1: in the North Atlantic that is vital to societies in
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Speaker 1: Europe and around the world. If the Atlantic meridian I'm sorry,
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Speaker 1: Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. One more time. Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation,
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Speaker 1: the AMOC. If it were to shut down, the continent
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Speaker 1: would plunge into ice age winters with year-round long droughts
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Speaker 1: and agriculture would become close to impossible. Yet whether the
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Speaker 1: AMOC really will fail, when that might happen and how quickly,
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Speaker 1: These points all remain highly uncertain, and because of that,
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Speaker 1: the threat remains a distant one in policymakers' minds. That
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Speaker 1: is why an 81 million euro plan is now afoot
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Speaker 1: to build an early warning system that could alert humanity
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Speaker 1: if AMOC is nearing a dangerous tipping point. Data now
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Speaker 1: being collected by the Attenborough Research Ship is core to
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Speaker 1: that plan. We might be committed to centuries of change
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Speaker 1: without knowing it, said ocean scientist Paul Holland at the
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Speaker 1: British Antarctic Survey as he prepared to set sail from
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Speaker 1: the port of Harwich, UK, some weeks earlier. Quote, we
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Speaker 1: might be passing these tipping points without realizing, end quote.
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Speaker 1: So how worried should we be about the AMOC collapsing?
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Speaker 1: What will it take to build an early warning system?
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Speaker 1: And will the alarm bells persuade governments to pull back
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Speaker 1: from the point of no return or at least to
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Speaker 1: prepare for the consequences. The AMOC is a crucial section
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Speaker 1: of an undulating but well-established conveyor belt of ocean currents
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Speaker 1: that flow around the globe. Traversing the entire belt takes
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Speaker 1: a typical parcel, about one cubic meter of water, about
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Speaker 1: a thousand years. Like the rest of this conveyor belt,
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Speaker 1: the AMOC, which circulates between North America and Europe, is
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Speaker 1: driven by temperature and salinity, Around the Gulf of Mexico,
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Speaker 1: the harsh sun heats the ocean and drives evaporation. The
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Speaker 1: resulting warm, salty water flows towards the seas between Greenland
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Speaker 1: and the UK in a part of the AMOC called
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Speaker 1: the Gulf Stream. As the circulation pushes north, the atmosphere
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Speaker 1: cools the salty water so that it becomes denser and
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Speaker 1: cascades towards the ocean floor like a subsurface waterfall. From there,
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Speaker 1: water flows southward along the seafloor back towards the Americas.
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Speaker 1: To replace the water sinking in the North Atlantic, more
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Speaker 1: warm water must then flow from the Gulf of Mexico,
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Speaker 1: powering the circulation. The warm water surging from the Gulf
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Speaker 1: of Mexico heats the air over the North Atlantic like
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Speaker 1: a massive radiator. This heated air blows east with the
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Speaker 1: prevailing winds, keeping the climate in Europe The average January
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Speaker 1: temperature in Bergen, Norway, for instance, is around 2.6 degrees Celsius,
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Speaker 1: while at almost the same latitude in Anchorage, Alaska, it's
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Speaker 1: negative 8.4 C. The AMOC transports 1.2 petawatts of heat,
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Speaker 1: 100 times more power than the energy used by all
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Speaker 1: humans on the planet. Without the AMOC, models predict that
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Speaker 1: sea ice would cover the North Sea down to Norfolk
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Speaker 1: in the UK and Friesland in the Netherlands. London would
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Speaker 1: experience an average winter temperature of 36 degrees Fahrenheit, with
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Speaker 1: cold snaps of negative 4 degrees Fahrenheit. Similar cold would
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Speaker 1: descend on Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin, and Paris. Oslo would see
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Speaker 1: deep freezes of negative 54 Fahrenheit, or below, at least
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Speaker 1: every 10 years. The winter is like being in the
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Speaker 1: Ice Age, and in Scotland it's in the Ice Age
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Speaker 1: for half the year, says Earth System scientist Tim Linton
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Speaker 1: at the University of Exeter, UK. Yet this vital circulation
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Speaker 1: is also the section of the global conveyor belt most
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Speaker 1: likely to slow down or shut down completely. in the
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Speaker 1: coming decades or centuries due to climate change. This possibility
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Speaker 1: was first suggested in a 1987 paper by geochemist Wallace
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Speaker 1: Brecker at Columbia University in New York. Fluctuations in Earth's
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Speaker 1: climate aren't always gradual, he wrote, and human-made global warming,
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Speaker 1: a term he popularized, could disrupt the feedbacks fueling the AMOC.
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Speaker 1: At the time, evidence was mounting that AMOC had shut
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Speaker 1: down in the past because of natural changes in the
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Speaker 1: planet's temperature. About 12,900 years ago, as the last glacial
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Speaker 1: period was ending, the northern hemisphere suddenly slipped back into
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Speaker 1: near-glacial conditions for 1,300 years, a period called the Younger Dryas.
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Speaker 1: After an arctic flower that spread through Europe then, Shortly
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Speaker 1: after Brecker's paper was published, geochemists studying the composition of
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Speaker 1: shells trapped in marine sediments found that the AMOC was
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Speaker 1: sending less surface water to the seafloor during the Younger Dryas.
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Speaker 1: Brecker and others argued that the melting of an ice
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Speaker 1: sheet over North America had injected fresh water into the
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Speaker 1: North Atlantic, diluting the salty water arriving via the Gulf
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Speaker 1: Stream and slowing its cascade towards the seafloor. Quote, we
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Speaker 1: play Russian roulette with the climate, he wrote at the time. Today,
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Speaker 1: a similar process may be happening again, only with fresh
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Speaker 1: water from Greenland. There are 200 fjords around Greenland pumping
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Speaker 1: out icebergs and gushing out meltwater five times faster than
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Speaker 1: they were 30 years ago, says marine geophysicist Kelly Hogan,
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Speaker 1: who's part of the BAS mission. Since 2004, sensors measuring
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Speaker 1: water flow have been anchored across the Atlantic as part
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Speaker 1: of the Rapid Climate Change Program. Although it has found
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Speaker 1: early indications that AMOC is weakening, it will take several
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Speaker 1: further decades of data collection to confirm this. Alongside this monitoring,
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Speaker 1: an analysis of how historical Atlantic surface temperatures have shifted
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Speaker 1: concluded that AMOC has slowed 15% since 1950. And the
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Speaker 1: appearance of a cold blob in the North Atlantic, the
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Speaker 1: only part of Earth's surface that has been cooling over
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Speaker 1: the past 150 years, suggests the AMOC is delivering less
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Speaker 1: warm water to the area than before. These aren't good omens,
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Speaker 1: yet climate models still vary hugely in terms of how
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Speaker 1: soon they predict the AMOC could reach a tipping point
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Speaker 1: and how soon after that it would shut down. In June,
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Speaker 1: for instance, a study found a 10 to 20% chance
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Speaker 1: the AMOC has already crossed the point of no return,
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Speaker 1: in which case it could collapse as soon as 2060.
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Speaker 1: But other research this year found the AMOC would weaken
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Speaker 1: only gradually, or if humanity emits carbon at a lesser rate,
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Speaker 1: not at all. The Advanced Research and Invention Agency, ARIA,
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Speaker 1: a UK government-backed science agency, is building an early warning
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Speaker 1: system to improve these forecasts and update them in almost
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Speaker 1: real time, rather than waiting years or decades for studies
18:53
Speaker 1: to come to fruition. To do this, researchers first need
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Speaker 1: to figure out the amount of meltwater from Greenland that
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Speaker 1: is entering the AMOC, what form it is in, and
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Speaker 1: how that is altering its flow. On the Attenborough research
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Speaker 1: ship before the expedition, Holland pulled up a map of
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Speaker 1: results from the UK government's flagship climate model on a screen.
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Speaker 1: Red pixels south of Greenland indicated where dense salty water
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Speaker 1: is sinking in the AMOC today. Then Holland switched to
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Speaker 1: a forecast for intense global warming in 2090. The red
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Speaker 1: sinking pixels had almost completely disappeared. This is a really
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Speaker 1: terrifying prospect, so the question is, is this realistic, he said.
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Speaker 1: Roughly half of the fresh water from Greenland comes from
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Speaker 1: the surface of the ice sheet, which is being melted
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Speaker 1: by warming air temperatures. The other half comes from the
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Speaker 1: fjords where warming ocean water melt the glaciers from below,
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Speaker 1: and where icebergs calve off, like the enormous ice face
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Speaker 1: that toppled in front of the ship. The second half
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Speaker 1: is difficult to model. For instance, many fjord glaciers rest
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Speaker 1: on relatively shallow sills of bedrock. If they recede into
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Speaker 1: deeper regions of the fjord, the calving can speed up.
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Speaker 1: It's an unstable, self-sustaining process, says oceanographer Peter Dutroux. It's
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Speaker 1: going to retreat like crazy until it finds another sill,
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Speaker 1: end quote. As a result, the UK's top climate model
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Speaker 1: may be either under or overestimating the freshwater coming from Greenland,
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Speaker 1: and because icebergs can float thousands of kilometers before they melt,
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Speaker 1: it may be incorrectly predicting where and when that freshwater
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Speaker 1: hits the AMOC. We need to measure the entire chain
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Speaker 1: of processes, says Holland. To do that, researchers on the
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Speaker 1: ARIA-funded Greenland Ice to Atlantic mission have a suite of
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Speaker 1: gadgets at their disposal, a Autonomous underwater vehicle shaped like
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Speaker 1: a fat yellow torpedo will scan the position of icebergs
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Speaker 1: and bergy bits in the fjords. Dry-X, a red surface
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Speaker 1: robot with a sonar pod underneath it, will map the
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Speaker 1: geometry of ice sheet faces. And small bundles of sensors will,
21:25
Speaker 1: once delivered by a robot, automatically drill themselves into glacier fronts,
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Speaker 1: all to measure How much of the retreat is due
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Speaker 1: to calving versus ice melt? This information will then be
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Speaker 1: fed into ice sheet models, which will be included in
21:39
Speaker 1: climate models to improve the AMOC tipping point forecasts. The
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Speaker 1: next stage of the project will focus on finding a
21:48
Speaker 1: way to give routine updates about these risks. One idea
21:51
Speaker 1: is to build an AI model that can reproduce the
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Speaker 1: forecasts without weeks or months of supercomputing time. The AI
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Speaker 1: would automatically analyze satellite imagery of ice fronts to spot
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Speaker 1: accelerations in glacier loss that could increase the freshwater input
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Speaker 1: to the AMOC. As a side point, regular warnings like
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Speaker 1: these would be valuable to local Inuit who fish and
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Speaker 1: hunt seals and whales in Greenland's coastal fjords. They would
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Speaker 1: know that an outpouring of meltwater or icebergs was coming
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Speaker 1: that might affect these crucial hunting grounds. An early warning
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Speaker 1: system would also need to analyze changes in the AMOC
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Speaker 1: ocean circulation. A climate scientist at the University of Reading
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Speaker 1: in the UK is one of several teams focusing on
22:40
Speaker 1: a crucial part of the AMOC called the subpolar gyre, G-Y-R-E,
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Speaker 1: a vast swirl of ocean currents south of Greenland where warm,
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Speaker 1: salty water is cooled by the atmosphere and sinks. The
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Speaker 1: ice sheet's melt is expected to slow down the rotation
22:59
Speaker 1: and sinking of that water, then a sudden shock could
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Speaker 1: push the weakened AMOC past its tipping point. Because we've
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Speaker 1: never directly observed the collapse or any climate tipping point,
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Speaker 1: we need to figure out what to look for. Robeson
23:14
Speaker 1: and his colleagues are trying to find potential shocks, such
23:17
Speaker 1: as a sudden influx of fresh water from a disintegrating
23:22
Speaker 1: Arctic sea ice. Quote, it may be that there's a
23:26
Speaker 1: very definite threshold in the system, he says, but it
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Speaker 1: could be that it's much more blurry, end quote. Now
23:34
Speaker 1: we turn to earth.com. America's largest underground water supply is
23:40
Speaker 1: drying up and will ultimately drive up the cost of
23:43
Speaker 1: groceries nationwide. The largest underground water supply in the United
23:49
Speaker 1: States is being drained faster than it refills, and it
23:52
Speaker 1: sits beneath one of the most productive farming regions on Earth.
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Speaker 1: In one Kansas county, farmers voted to cut their own pumping.
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Speaker 1: Fourteen years later, the water table there has nearly stopped falling.
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Speaker 1: The Ogallala Aquifer runs beneath eight Great Plains states from
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Speaker 1: South Dakota down to Texas. covering about 111 million acres.
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Speaker 1: It supplies roughly 30% of the groundwater used for irrigation
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Speaker 1: in the country and underpins around a fifth of American
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Speaker 1: agricultural output, along with drinking water for about 1.9 million people. Corn, wheat, cotton,
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Speaker 1: and cattle across the plains all depend on it, which
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Speaker 1: is why its decline is a food story rather than
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Speaker 1: only a water story. The Ogallala is often called a
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Speaker 1: fossil aquifer filled thousands to millions of years ago. Natural
24:48
Speaker 1: recharge in much of the region runs at less than
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Speaker 1: an inch a year, far below what irrigation removes, so
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Speaker 1: the system is effectively being mined rather than used. Research
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Speaker 1: indicates that pumping reductions of 25 to 30 percent would
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Speaker 1: be needed to stabilize water levels across the aquifer on
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Speaker 1: a decadal timescale. U.S. geological survey data shows water levels
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Speaker 1: in parts of the High Plains Aquifer have dropped by
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Speaker 1: more than 200 feet in some locations since large-scale irrigation
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Speaker 1: began in the mid-20th century. Satellite analyses show declines across
25:30
Speaker 1: the aquifer concentrated in the heavily irrigated portions of Texas
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Speaker 1: and Kansas. A NASA Earth data analysis has mapped what
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Speaker 1: researchers describe as the human footprint on the aquifer, showing
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Speaker 1: how pumping for agriculture has reshaped groundwater across the region.
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Speaker 1: Studies suggest up to 40% of the aquifer may no
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Speaker 1: longer support irrigated agriculture within decades. The collapse when it
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Speaker 1: comes will not look like a tap being turned off.
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Speaker 1: Chris Bowden, a postdoctoral researcher in agricultural water management at
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Speaker 1: the University of Manchester, told Newsweek that the constraint arrives
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Speaker 1: gradually as a falling water table reduces the rate at
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Speaker 1: which a farmer can get water onto fields. Farmers respond
26:21
Speaker 1: by irrigating less land rather than spreading thinner water over
26:25
Speaker 1: the same acreage since the latter wrecks yields. More ground
26:30
Speaker 1: goes rain-fed while a smaller area stays highly productive. Total
26:35
Speaker 1: production still falls under that arrangement even though the remaining
26:39
Speaker 1: fields look fine Losing irrigation removes a buffer rather than
26:44
Speaker 1: simply reducing output. Quote, irrigation is usually a buffer that
26:48
Speaker 1: prevents catastrophic crop losses, Bowden said, adding that without it,
26:53
Speaker 1: drought shocks hit harder and year-to-year price spikes become more likely.
26:58
Speaker 1: Much of the corn grown on the plains feeds livestock,
27:01
Speaker 1: so disruptions travel into meat and dairy prices before reaching
27:06
Speaker 1: grocery bills. A structural problem sits underneath all of this,
27:10
Speaker 1: and it is unglamorous. Groundwater use is hard to measure.
27:15
Speaker 1: Bowdoin notes that even where policies exist, enforcement is difficult
27:20
Speaker 1: without visibility into how much water is actually being pumped
27:24
Speaker 1: at the farm level. He is working on a project
27:27
Speaker 1: using satellite imagery and machine learning to map irrigation patterns.
27:32
Speaker 1: Currently focused on sub-Saharan Africa, though the approach transfers to
27:37
Speaker 1: stress systems anywhere. Satellites already photograph farmland every few days,
27:42
Speaker 1: which makes the data problem more tractable than it was
27:45
Speaker 1: a decade ago. The most instructive response to Ogallala depletion
27:51
Speaker 1: has been running in Northwest Kansas since 2013. Legislation allowing
27:58
Speaker 1: irrigators within a groundwater district to write their own conservation plan,
28:03
Speaker 1: which the state then enforces. Farmers set themselves a target
28:07
Speaker 1: of cutting pumping by 20%, and they've achieved 32%. Water
28:12
Speaker 1: level decline rates have fallen by about 65% from annual
28:16
Speaker 1: drops of 1.5 to 2 feet down to half a
28:19
Speaker 1: foot or less. Well, that's all for the Diary of
28:23
Speaker 1: Science and Nature. Your reader was Kelly Taylor. Now stay
28:27
Speaker 1: tuned for further programming on Radio Eye.