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As ‘doomsday’ glacier melts, can an artificial barrier save it?
Relatively warm ocean currents are weakening the base of Antarctica’s enormous Thwaites Glacier, whose demise could raise sea levels by as much as 7 feet. To separate the ice from those warmer ocean waters, scientists have put forward an audacious plan to erect a massive underwater curtain.
They call it the Doomsday Glacier. A chunk of Antarctic ice as big as Florida and two thirds of a mile thick, the Thwaites Glacier disgorges into the ocean in a remote region of West Antarctica. Glaciologists say it may be on the verge of total collapse, which could swamp huge areas of low-lying coastal land around the world within a few decades. Now, ambitious plans to save it are set to become an early test of whether the world is prepared to enact massive geo-engineering efforts to ward off the worst effects of climate change.
Recent monitoring by uncrewed submarines and satellites, along with ice-sheet modeling, suggest that the Thwaites Glacier and its adjacent smaller twin, the Pine Island Glacier, may already be in a death spiral — eaten up by the intensifying speed and warmth of the powerful Antarctic Circumpolar Current. If they are past a point of no return, say researchers involved in the studies, then only massive human intervention can save them.
Nothing is certain. A new modeling study published last week said the risk of unstoppable retreat of the glacier may be overblown. But there is no time to waste, argues the glaciologist orchestrating the call for action, John Moore of Lapland University, in northern Finland. Within two years, he and colleagues in Europe hope to be working in a Norwegian fjord, testing prototypes for a giant submarine curtain, up to 50 miles across, that could seal off the two glaciers from the remorseless Antarctic current.
Meanwhile, some of his collaborators, fearing the logistical complications of such a task, are pondering an even more mind-bending idea. They want to substitute the physical curtain with a giant “bubble curtain,” created by a constant injection of bubbles of air or cold surface water.
Opponents of the plans, including many glaciologists, say such outlandish proposals are a dangerous diversion from the real task of mitigating climate change by curbing carbon emissions. But advocates say the two glaciers can’t wait. “We can’t mitigate our way out of this,” says Moore. “We need other tools.”
Glaciologists have discussed scary prognoses for the rapid collapse of giant Antarctic glaciers for almost half a century. Glaciers in West Antarctica are particularly vulnerable because they are not sitting on solid land; they are surrounded by ocean and pinned precariously to the peaks of submarine mountains, between which the circumpolar current swirls.
Back in 1978, glaciologist John Mercer, of Ohio State University, warned of a “major disaster – a rapid five-meter rise in sea level, caused by deglaciation of West Antarctica” — should atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide continue to rise. Three years later, glaciologist Terry Hughes, of the University of Maine, identified a “weak underbelly” to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, where the Thwaites and Pine Island glaciers drain into the Amundsen Sea, an arm of the Southern Ocean.
These glaciers are two of the ice continent’s five largest and are the gateway to the ocean for nearly half of the ice sheet. Hughes warned that the glaciers could easily lose their grip on the submarine mountains as warmer water melts ice directly beneath them, leading to their disintegration within a few decades. Their meltwater would raise sea levels globally by as much as seven feet. That would rise to more than 12 feet if, as the pair suspected, the glaciers’ demise dragged down the rest of the ice sheet with it.
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Coral Restoration's Wake Up Call
By Chris D'Angelo | Photography by Jason Gulley
Rebuilding degraded coral reefs started as a noble endeavor, but now some coral scientists are confronting a dark reality.
FLORIDA KEYS — Until last summer, Pickles Reef was seen as a bright spot in the field of coral restoration. The Coral Restoration Foundation, one of the largest reef restoration organizations in the world, had spent the better part of two decades working to breathe new life into this degraded site, outplanting tens of thousands of small colonies of coral, mostly fast-growing elkhorn and staghorn.
Pickles looked relatively healthy, with coral outplants reaching maturity and even beginning to spawn. There was hope.
Then came July and August of 2023, when a relentless, record-shattering marine heat wave triggered widespread coral bleaching and put reefs throughout the Keys in a death grip. Bleaching is a phenomenon in which heat-stressed corals expel the symbiotic algae that they rely on for most of their food and turn ghost-white, often leading to widespread coral mortality. The heat in the Florida Keys was so extreme that in many cases, corals didn’t have time to bleach. Instead, they simply roasted to death.
It was around 10:30 a.m. on a sunny Sunday morning this July when scientists and interns from CRF arrived at Pickles, approximately 5 miles off the coast of Tavernier, Florida. As they suited up in their dive gear, Phanor Montoya-Maya, the foundation’s restoration program manager, announced that the team’s primary task was to search for survivors. One by one, the divers stepped off the back of the dive boat and descended to the shallow reef below.
Montoya-Maya and others quickly became fixated on a small group of staghorn corals that they’d planted two years earlier. Somehow, these colonies, situated on an outer edge of the reef, had survived the previous summer’s heat. Montoya-Maya gave a thumbs-up, signaling his excitement, and then took time to remove several predatory yellow-footed snails, which feast on coral tissue, before he and the others spread out to look for other colonies.
That’s when the scale of the devastation became clear. Those few healthy colonies were outliers. In every direction stretched a field of dead corals, devoid of their once-vibrant color and often covered in green algae. Fish lingered in the rubble as if waiting for their habitat to magically reappear.
During the nearly one-hour dive, the team identified just 28 living coral colonies of just two different genotypes. Everything else they surveyed — thousands of corals that had been raised and carefully planted in previous years — had perished, the latest victims of the world’s decades-long addiction to planet-heating fossil fuels.
Once dominant throughout Florida, staghorn and elkhorn corals are both in severe decline and listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. And despite being the backbone of coral restoration efforts in Florida, there are thought to be more genotypes — uniquely diverse in their genetic makeup — of the two species now living under the care of reef practitioners, either in on-land facilities or offshore nurseries, than in the wild across Florida’s 350-mile reef, according to Montoya-Maya.
As a whole, Florida’s reef — the third-largest barrier reef on the planet — is more a remnant skeleton of its former self than the vibrant ecosystem you likely picture when you think of a “coral reef.”
“It is a coral reef because the structure is still there,” Montoya-Maya said. “Whether it is a functioning coral reef, that is a different story.”
Japan swelters through hottest summer while parts of China log warmest August on record
Climate scientists have already predicted that 2024 will be the hottest year ever
Japan has recorded its hottest summer on record after a sweltering three months marked by thousands of instances of “extreme heat”, with meteorologists warning that unseasonably high temperatures will continue through the autumn.
The average temperature in June, July and August was 1.76C higher than the average recorded between 1991 and 2020, the Japan meteorological agency said, according to Kyodo news agency.
It was the hottest summer since comparable records were first kept in 1898 and tied the record set in 2023, the agency said. Japan has recorded 8,821 instances of “extreme heat” – a temperature of 35C or higher – so far this year, easily beating the previous record of 6,692 set in 2023, it added.
The brutal heat was not confined to Japan. Swathes of China logged the hottest August on record, the weather service said.
The hot weather prompted delays to the start of the new school year in some Chinese cities. State media reported on Tuesday that some schools and universities in Jiangxi, Chongqing, and Sichuan provinces had pushed the return to school out to 9 September, citing high temperatures.
China Daily said Chongqing authorities had extended school holidays for all kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, and at least a dozen colleges and universities, “to ensure the safety and health of teachers and students amid the extreme heat”.
Chongqing is notoriously hot in summer, but it and other nearby regions including Sichuan have had abnormally high temperatures in recent weeks. A red alert for temperatures exceeding 40 C – the highest of China’s three-tier warning system – was issued for 12 consecutive days from late August until the start of September.
China is the leading emitter of the greenhouse gases that scientists say are driving global climate change.
Beijing has pledged to bring carbon dioxide emissions to a peak by 2030 and to net zero by 2060.
Its weather service said in an article published on Sunday that average air temperatures for August in eight provinces, regions and cities “ranked the hottest for the same period” since records began.
They included the megacity of Shanghai, and the provinces of Jiangsu, Hebei, Hainan, Jilin, Liaoning and Shandong as well as the north-west region of Xinjiang, the weather service said.
A further five provinces chalked up their second-hottest August, while seven more endured their third-hottest.
“Looking back at the past month, most parts of China have experienced a hotter summer than in previous years,” the weather service said.
The major population centres of Shanghai, Hangzhou and Chongqing also saw more “high temperature days” – typically declared when the mercury breaches 35C – than in any August since records began.
How China and Africa Can Better Collaborate to Close Sub-Saharan Africa’s Energy Access Gap
The world is far off-track to meet its shared goal of providing affordable, reliable and sustainable energy to all people by 2030. Indeed, the number of people without electricity access increased in 2022 for the first time in a decade, rising from 675 million in 2021 to 685 million the next year. Eighty percent of people without electricity access — and 18 of the 20 countries with the biggest energy access deficits — are in sub-Saharan Africa.
Closing sub-Saharan Africa's massive energy access gap will require substantial investments; around $20 billion per year through 2030, according to the International Energy Agency's (IEA) estimate. And China could play a key role in filling that need.
China is not only Africa's largest bilateral trading partner and one of its biggest sources of foreign aid, but is also home to more than 80% of the world's renewable energy manufacturing. This makes the country uniquely well positioned to support clean energy expansion and access in sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, it's already made strides in that direction. For example, China's government financed the construction of a utility-scale 50 megawatt (MW) solar plant in Kenya — the first of its kind in the country. Since opening in 2019, the plant has supplied an average of over 100,000 MWH of electricity annually, enough to support more than 350,000 people in 70,000 households.
While China has also supported some smaller, localized renewable energy efforts in sub-Saharan Africa, most of its investments in the region have focused on this kind of utility-scale installation. The challenge is that large, centralized projects often struggle to meet the dispersed, small-scale electricity needs of rural communities — particularly in remote areas where energy access is scarce. The mismatch between scattered electricity demand and centralized energy supply has made it difficult to increase access where it's needed most.
As China hosts the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) this September, closing electricity access gaps in sub-Saharan Africa must be top of the agenda.
About the Africa Solar Belt Program
Recently, China committed to shift its overseas renewable energy investments toward smaller-scale initiatives that prioritize social benefits. Its first major program under this new strategy — and a key initiative of the Forum on Africa-China Cooperation — is the Africa Solar Belt.
The Africa Solar Belt Program, which is supported by research and policy analysis from WRI, aims to provide CNY 100 million (around US$14 million) in public funds between 2024 and 2027 to supply 50,000 African households with solar home systems. It also aims to support interventions that can improve livelihoods of local populations, which could potentially include things like powering schools or healthcare with solar. China has promoted this as a shift to "small and beautiful" projects rather than its traditional utility-scale investments.
But while the Africa Solar Belt and similar programs could significantly expand electricity access and improve people's welfare in sub-Saharan Africa, fulfilling this promise will require China and Africa to work together to overcome critical implementation challenges.
