The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track United States extreme or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: Why New Eyes On This World Are So Very Important
Dear Diary. We live in an age in which just about every street corner has a video camera for surveillance. Police are being policed through their body cameras, leading to hopes for reform due to such events as the recording of the George Floyd murder. It wasn’t that long ago that bulky hand held video cameras got smaller, and those devices were able to become part of smart phones. Never has the truth of any matter been just as easy as one click away in 2021.
In a new age in which I believe truth will really matter, video to record events will be necessary. Satellites that record our changing climate have become essential to find out how fast and how badly carbon pollution is putting a strain on our environment. In the last few decades we have been getting good photographs from space concerning the cryosphere and glacial retreat.
Satellites have gotten more sophisticated, as well, and this last week it was announced that another set of eyes is viewing the Great Barrier Reef from space. Here is much more from Mongabay:
Mongabay Series: Oceans
Satellites keep watch over global reef health in a world first
by Mongabay.com on 20 May 2021
- Scientists working with the Allen Coral Atlas just launched the world’s first global, satellite-based reef-monitoring system.
- This tool can track global coral bleaching events in near-real-time and provide an overall view of trends and changes in coral reef health that can be used to inform conservation efforts and policy.
- A beta version of the system that was piloted in Hawai‘i during the 2019 Pacific heat wave, and helped identify bleaching hotspots as well as resilient corals that could be used for reef restoration.
While coral reefs throughout the Indo-Pacific region have been bleaching in response to rising sea temperatures, the reefs around Marovo Lagoon in the Solomon Islands have mostly kept their color. But in March 2021, that all changed: the lagoon’s once-healthy reefs turned ghostly white as the water temperature rose to new highs, much to the distress of conservationists.
Coral bleaching — what happens when rising temperatures push corals to expel their life-sustaining algae — has become a problem in just about every part of the world. Some models predict that 70% to 90% of the world’s coral reefs will be lost in a mere 30 years if action isn’t taken to mitigate the effects of climate change and other anthropogenic pressures on the ocean, such as coastal development and unsustainable fishing practices.
Greg Asner conducting coral reef fieldwork in Hawaii. Image by Greg Asner.
To monitor the coral bleaching issue, scientists working with the Allen Coral Atlas — a research initiative developed by Arizona State University (ASU), the University of Queensland, the National Geographic Society, Planet, and Vulcan — just launched the first global, satellite-based reef surveillance tool. The system can track bleaching events in near-real-time and provide an overall view of trends and changes in coral reef health. The researchers involved in the project say the monitoring system can inform conservation efforts and policy by providing critical information about which reefs are under stress and which ones appear to be more resilient to events like marine heat waves.
“Our ability to monitor changes in coral reef conditions has always been a clear but challenging requirement to drive decisions on where to apply our best restorative and protective strategies,” Greg Asner, managing director of the Allen Coral Atlas and director of ASU’s Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science, said in a statement. “The new Atlas Monitoring System is a major step in our effort to bring eyes to the reef at a global scale and yet with extraordinary detail needed for progressive reef interventions.”
Data for New Caledonia on April 26, 2021 generated by The Allen Coral Atlas Monitoring System. Image by Allen Coral Atlas.
Atlas Bleaching Data for Madagascar on April 26, 2021. Image by Allen Coral Atlas.
The Allen Coral Atlas uses high-resolution satellite imagery supplied daily from U.S. imaging company Planet, which is run through an algorithm that helps map stressed-out corals as well as healthy ones.
“This monitoring capability will help us to see, for the first time, where and to what extent coral bleaching is likely to be occurring as well as where it isn’t bleaching so we can identify resilient reefs,” Paulina Gerstner, program director for the Allen Coral Atlas, said in a statement. “The system is the outcome of years of effort involving our ecologists, remote sensing scientists, software engineers and many others.”
Bleached corals in Hawaii. Image by Greg Asner.
A beta version of the Allen Coral Atlas was piloted in Hawai‘i during the 2019 Pacific heat wave, which caused widespread bleaching across the archipelago. The pilot program helped identify bleaching hotspots that were difficult to detect with traditional field-based methods. Also, it allowed researchers to identify heat-resistant corals that could be used for restoration purposes.
“It’s important for people to understand that this is just the first global version of our monitoring system,” Asner said. “We intend to improve and expand it to include a broader range of impacts on reefs such as land-sea pollutants and sediments. This first, truly global reef monitoring system is simply a drop in the bucket for what is to come.”
Banner image caption: Coral bleaching at Heron Island in February 2016. Image by The Ocean Agency / XL Catlin Seaview Survey / Richard Vevers / Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
Here are some “ET’s” from Sunday:
Here is more climate and weather news from Sunday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)
Now here are some of today’s articles and notes on the horrid COVID-19 pandemic:
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Guy Walton “The Climate Guy”