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<ul><li>Ancient tools discovered in northern India provide new evidence that humans were able to survive one of the largest volcanic events in human history — the <keyword id="8833232" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="toba-supervolcano">Toba supervolcano</keyword> eruption. </li><li>The <keyword id="8833230" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="toba-catastrophe-theory">Toba catastrophe theory</keyword> states that the eruption covered South Asia in ash and blackened out the skies triggering an ice age, leaving only a dwindling human population in its wake. </li><li>However, mounting archaeological evidence suggests that humans may have persevered. </li></ul>When the Toba supervolcano erupted 74,000 years ago, it was one of the most devastating events to ever hit the planet, thought to have brought humanity on the brink of extinction — or so we thought. Ancient tools discovered in Dhaba northern India punch another hole Toba catastrophe theory and add to the piling evidence that the event wasn’t as extreme as scientists previously assumed. <div type="image" title="tools2" msid="74313943" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Stone tools found at the Dhaba site corresponding with the Toba volcanic super-eruption levels. Pictured here are diagnostic Middle Palaeolithic core types.&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>

 The Toba catastrophe theory states that the massive eruption — 100 times greater than the biggest explosion in recent history, the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora — only left a few thousand survivors in its wake. The fall-out triggered a decade of volcanic winter and an ice-age that lasted a millennium. However, the study of stone tools published in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14668-4">Nature Communications</a> suggests that humans were present in the Middle Son Valley 80,000 years before and after the volcano erupted. <div type="image" title="tools3" msid="74313987" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Key artefact types at Dhaba&amp;lt;br&amp;gt;&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>

 "Although Toba ash was first identified in the Son Valley back in the 1980s until now we did not have associated archaeological evidence, so the Dhaba site fills in a major chronological gap," said principal investigator <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-02/mpif-hps022020.php">J.N. Pal</a>. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust — the Toba catastrophe theory The Toba catastrophe theory is one of correlation. Around the same time as the eruption in present-day Indonesia, humanity was in a bit of rut with respect to evolution. <div type="image" title="tools4" msid="74314035" hostid="261"></div>

 The sky was blacked out, most of South Asia and the Indian Ocean was covered in 15 centimetres-thick layer of ash, and humanity was dying out. Since both events seem to coincide, scientists theorised that the supervolcano was a plausible reason for the sudden drop in diversity. However, with new data coming into the picture, the pieces are no longer adding up. Reasonable doubt The first evidence to refute the theory came to light in 2007. Evidence of stone tools in southern India suggested that humans existed during the time period. However, according to the Toba catastrophe theory the only surviving humans were in Africa — who later populated Asia 60,000 years ago. A fossil found in South Africa cast further doubt. Discovered in 2018, the archaeological evidence suggested that the global human not only survived the eruption but thrived. Human resilience Scientists still agree that there was a drop in diversity around 70,000 years ago. However, some no longer believe it was due to the supervolcano triggering climate change. A few theorise that it’s simply the founder effect — the loss of genetic variation when small groups break off from a large population, but they’re not genetically representative. As a result, the population is vulnerable to genetic drift and inbreeding. More data is needed to fill the gaps of Earth’s timeline, but these new ancient tools suggest that humans were able to survive one of the largest volcanic events in human history. See also: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/the-weathering-himalayas-might-not-be-behind-earths-cooling-over-the-past-15-million-years/articleshow/71271248.cms">The weathering Himalayas might not be behind Earth's cooling over the past 15 million years</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/nasa-has-a-3-5-billion-idea-to-save-earth-from-a-supervolcano-apocalypse/articleshow/67649185.cms">NASA has a $3.5 billion idea to save Earth from a supervolcano apocalypse</a>

Ancient tools found in India suggest the Toba supervolcano eruption didn't leave humanity on the brink of extinction

<ul><li>New evidence has been found the support the theory that a series of volcanic eruptions in the Deccan Traps might have triggered Earth’s mass extinction 66 million years ago.</li><li>Volcanoes, like the Deccan Traps, are the largest source of mercury in the atmosphere.</li><li>Fossils find that at the time of the eruptions — tens of thousands of years before the <keyword id="6549794" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="asteroid">asteroid</keyword> impact — had a profound and long-lasting impact on the world.</li></ul>Theories around how the dinosaurs met their untimely end aren’t restricted to an earth-killing asteroid. New evidence says has found that massive volcanic eruptions in India might have <a href="https://news.umich.edu/two-in-one-fossil-shells-reveal-both-global-mercury-contamination-and-warming-when-dinosaurs-perished/">contaminated the atmosphere</a> with mercury long before any asteroid even flew close. These eruptions began <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-02/aaft-tse021919.php">tens of thousands</a> of years before the asteroid impact. They form what is now known as the Deccan Traps in southwestern India. The lava flowing from them covered nearly 1.5 million kilometres — approximately half the size of the peninsula. 
 
 <div type="image" title="deccantraps" msid="72832164" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Location of Deccan Traps on the Indian peninsular continent&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>





 Marine mossulk shell fossils from 66 million years ago found by the <a href="https://news.umich.edu/two-in-one-fossil-shells-reveal-both-global-mercury-contamination-and-warming-when-dinosaurs-perished/">University of Michigan</a> indicate that the eruption had a ‘profound, long-lasting and global’ impact on the world — enough to light the match of mass extinction. "For the first time, we can provide insights into the distinct climatic and environmental impacts of Deccan Traps volcanism by analysing a single material," said Kyle Meyer, lead author of the study. How can volcanoes set off mass extinctions? Volcanoes are the largest source of mercury in the atmosphere — a toxic trace metal that poses a grave threat to human health, and wildlife in general — in addition to the substantial amount of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide they spew. 
 
 <div type="image" title="deccantraps4" msid="72832318" hostid="261" caption="&amp;lt;p&amp;gt;Sulphur dioxide fumes from an active volcano&amp;lt;/p&amp;gt;"></div>





 So, theoretically, when the Deccan Traps erupted, they filled the atmosphere with a host of lethal gases. The sulfur fumes were enough to turn the oceans to acid and kill three-quarters of the Earth’s population. And, new fossils found by researchers, indicates that to be true. The shells act as pre-historic record of temperature and mercury. And, they signal two things. There was an abrupt ocean warming at the time and, the mercury concentration in the atmosphere was elevated. It was so high that it matched levels of ‘significant modern industrial mercury contamination’. Studying the shells Before researchers fold marine mollusk shell fossils from 66 million years ago, records of environmental mercury have largely been based on marine sediments. But, they have never been able to establish changes in the mercury levels as a response to changes in the climate. This is the first time that the indicator for both events has been found in the same specimen. The new fossils gave them an opportunity to assemble the first-ever deep-time record of mercury preserved in fossilized remains, while also determining marine temperature using a technique called carbonate clumped isotope paleothermometry. According to their results, an abrupt global warming event took place 250 thousand years before the dinosaur-ending <keyword id="7976329" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="asteroid-hit-earth">asteroid hit Earth</keyword>. Other studies have found that volcanic activity during that same time period was so intense that it created a carpet of lava 100 feet thick. The Deccan Trap eruptions were also what reportedly broke up the <keyword id="26341" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="gondwana">Gondwana</keyword> supercontinent and brought the western Indian Ocean into existence. See also: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/mass-extinction-bigger-than-dinosaur-asteroid-may-have-occurred-2-billion-years-ago/articleshow/70902923.cms">Dinosaurs dying off might not have be been the biggest mass extinction on Earth</a> <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/climate-change-causes-australian-mammal-to-go-extinct/articleshow/68081948.cms">Climate change claims its first casualty in world's largest coral reef system</a>

Not an asteroid but massive volcanic eruptions in India might have set off mass extinction 66 million years ago

<ul class="summary-list"><li><keyword id="6357341" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="deutsche-bank">Deutsche Bank</keyword> this week published a somewhat bizarre research note speculating on a series of potentially catastrophic events it says could befall the global <keyword id="34412" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="economy">economy</keyword> in the next decade.</li><li>The bank said in a note Tuesday that there is a 33% chance at least one of four scenarios will occur in the next 10 years.</li><li>These are: A far more deadly pandemic than COVID-19, a volcanic eruption, a solar flare and global war. </li><li>"An important question is what would happen if a much larger, more catastrophic eruption occurred," analysts from the bank asked.</li></ul>COVID-19 has been pretty much the only story in town for global <keyword id="31671" type="CITY" weightage="100" keywordseo="markets">markets</keyword> and the world economy in 2020, but Deutsche Bank thinks there is a 33% chance of at least one of four much bigger risks, including a "globally catastrophic" volcanic eruption taking place over the next 10 years. In an unconventional note Tuesday, the German bank said: "We find there is a one-in-three chance that at least one of four major tail risks will occur within the next decade: a major influenza pandemic killing more than 2 million people; a globally catastrophic volcanic eruption; a major solar flare; or a global war."Deutsche Bank said this assumes a:<ul><li>2% annual probability of a flu pandemic killing 2.2 million people.</li><li>0.15% chance of a VEI-7 — the highest level volcanic activity — eruption taking place. </li><li>1.06% chance of a solar flare — which would disrupt global communications.</li><li>0.625% chance of a global war.</li></ul>Below are Deutsche Bank's four possible scenarios, and how they might hurt the global economy:<h2>A bigger pandemic than COVID-19</h2><div type="image" title="FILE PHOTO: A worker wearing a protective suit takes body temperature measurement of a man inside the Shanghai Stock Exchange building, as the country is hit by the coronavirus outbreak, at the Pudong financial district in Shanghai, China February 28, 2020. REUTERS/Aly Song " height="1890" width="3779" msid="76431304" hostid="261"></div>Deutsche Bank noted that while COVID-19 has had an enormous impact, it has still been less disastrous than other major pandemics such as the Spanish flu in 1918, the Black Death in the 14th century, the Plague of Justinian of the sixth century, and a smallpox outbreak in Japan that began in 735. Deutsche Bank said: "Before Covid-19 occurred, Madhav et al. (2017) estimated there was an annual probability of 2 per cent that an influenza pandemic will cause 2.2 million pneumonia and influenza deaths or more globally." "Given that Covid-19 has led to a severe recessions and lockdowns in numerous countries, an even more serious pandemic could be even more catastrophic."<h2>A VEI-7 volcanic eruption would cause major disruption</h2>The German lender said one of the biggest risks to global stability comes from volcanic eruptions. "Consider that the relatively remote Eyjafjallajökull <keyword id="6357324" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Volcano">volcano</keyword> in Iceland shut down nearly all of European airspace in 2010, leading to extensive economic disruption. And further back in 1991, the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines was so large it actually led to a reduction in global temperatures over the subsequent two years.""So an important question is what would happen if a much larger, more catastrophic eruption occurred, and how likely is this to happen," Deutsche Bank said. The bank's projections are based on a VEI-7 volcano, the highest level on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, which "would cause major disruption on a global scale."The last time the earth experienced a VEI-7 eruption was in 1815 in Indonesia, when Mount Tambora erupted. That eruption was so devastating that it reduced global temperatures and led 1816 to be dubbed the "Year without a summer."<h2>A gigantic solar flare</h2><div type="image" title="sun" height="512" width="1024" msid="76431310" hostid="261"></div>Deutsche Bank said the the next risk comes "from millions of miles away" — from the sun."A severe solar storm can cause substantial and long-standing damage here on Earth.""A similar event occurring today would be far more disruptive given that modern technology is based on electronics."There could be major power outages as electrical power grids are disrupted, which in turn would have knock-on effects throughout the economy as critical infrastructure is unable to be run properly," the bank noted. <h2>Outbreak of a war or an accident with a nuclear weapon</h2><div type="image" title="India China Narendra Modi Xi Jinping" height="1250" width="2500" msid="76431316" hostid="261"></div>Deutsche Bank said countries are less likely to go to war than they did in previous decades but nonetheless it still sees this as a risk to global stability. The bank said it is "more difficult to place a probability on the outbreak of war" as it includes human calculations. "However, if we made the conservative assumption that the annual probability of a global war is 0.625% (i.e. a 1 in 160 chance each year), then that means there's a 22 per cent chance that one will take place within the next 40 years," Deutsche Bank said. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/india-china-border-dispute-conflict-soldiers-killed-himalayas-2020-6">Tensions have flared in recent days between India and China,</a> with some already speculating that the fighting on the two countries' Himalayan border could be a catalyst for a major conflict.<h2>Biggest risks possibly beyond this lifetime</h2><div type="image" title="dinosaur asteroid meteor" height="720" width="1440" msid="76431322" hostid="261"></div>Deutsche Bank's research went beyond the decade and possibly even this life-time through a set of extreme "possibilities we're unlikely to see in our lifetimes." "One possible extreme tail risk is a VEI-8 volcanic eruption, which would be much more severe than the VEI-7 cases discussed earlier. One example of this is the eruption of Mount Toba around 75,000 years ago," Deutsche Bank said. The bank said another possibility is an asteroid strike which most notably occured around 66 million years ago and led to the mass extinction of dinosaurs and a host of other life on earth. "While this may seem implausible, smaller instances have happened in recorded history."The bank concludes: "Tail risks that can cause these changes are more common than many realise and it is more likely than not that the coming decades will see another with consequences at least as severe as those caused by COVID-19."

Deutsche Bank says a giant volcanic eruption and another deadly pandemic are among the 'catastrophic' disasters that could devastate the world economy in the next 10 years

<div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image">Mark Thiessen/APIn this January 2016 photo, dead common murres lie washed up on a rocky beach in Whittier, Alaska. A year after tens of thousands of common murres, an abundant North Pacific seabird, starved and washed ashore on beaches from California to Alaska, researchers pinned the cause to unusually warm ocean temperatures that affected the tiny fish they eat.</div></div></div><ul class="summary-list"><li>The Permian extinction, known as the "Great Dying," killed off most marine and land animals about 252 million years ago.</li><li>Scientists have suggested various causes of this catastrophe, from methane-spewing <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/microbes">microbes</a> to volcanic eruptions that acidified <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/oceans">the oceans</a>.</li><li>In a new study, a team of researchers found that the primary cause for the extinction was actually <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/category/global-warming">climate change</a>, which led the oceans to lose oxygen.</li><li>The study's authors warn that Earth is on the path to another devastating mass extinction.</li></ul>About 252 million years ago, the vast majority of species on Earth were killed off in the "Great Dying," the worst mass extinction in our planet's history. Up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of land animals were killed off during this event, which was even more deadly than the extinction of dinosaurs. <a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/111/9/3316.full">Research published in March 2014</a> suggests the extinction took place over a period of 60,000 years, a very short timeframe in the grand scheme of Earth's history. Scientists have offered several hypotheses for the cause of this event, which marked the end of the Permian period. One study claims the Great Dying, also known as the Permian extinction, occurred after a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/r-methane-spewing-microbe-blamed-in-earths-worst-mass-extinction-2014-31">microbe spewed large amounts of methane</a> into Earth's atmosphere. Other research suggests the event was triggered by a series of volcanic eruptions that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/volcanic-eruptions-caused-permian-extinction-2014-12?r=UK&amp;IR=T">sent a deadly amount of carbon dioxide into the air</a>, and a third study claims the eruptions led to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/r-acidic-oceans-implicated-in-earths-worst-mass-extinction-2015-4">cataclysmic ocean acidification</a>. A new research study <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6419/eaat1327">published in Science</a> claims the Great Dying was caused primarily by rapidly increasing temperatures. The researchers made their conclusion after examining marine fossil records and using climate simulations to recreate the effects of rising temperatures 252 million years ago.During the Permian extinction, volcanoes in Siberia released so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that Earth's temperature went up by about 10 degrees Celsius. Hotter oceans meant that animals needed more oxygen to survive, but the heat also depleted the waters from oxygen. This loss of oxygen due to rising temperatures, the scientists said, was the primary cause for the Great Dying. Another mass extinction tied to rising ocean temperatures is on track to occur again, the scientists said. By 2100, Earth could see temperature levels <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ipcc-climate-change-report-why-2-degree-warming-is-dangerous-2018-10">as high as 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels</a> by 2100. Study co-author Curtis Deutsch, a professor at the University of Washington, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/12/oxygen-loss-during-mass-extinction/577537/">told The Atlantic</a> that from there, 10 degrees wouldn't be "that far off the charts.""This study shows that we're on that same road toward extinction, and the question is how far down it we go," lead author Justin Penn, a doctoral student at the University of Washington, told The Atlantic.Ocean plants <a href="https://earthsky.org/earth/how-much-do-oceans-add-to-worlds-oxygen">produce up to 85%</a> of the oxygen in the air we breathe, but the volume of ocean water that has been depleted of oxygen has <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/new-studies-show-oceans-losing-oxygen-rapid-coral-bleaching-2018-1">quadrupled over the past 50 years</a>. These studies say oceans are losing oxygen in large part due to human activity.Read more: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/biological-annihilation-sixth-mass-extinction-2017-7">Scientists say we're witnessing the planet's sixth mass extinction - and 'biological annihilation' is the latest sign</a>According to several studies, Earth <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/animals-going-extinct-recovery-3-million-years-2018-10">could already be undergoing a sixth mass extinction</a> that would kill off most animal and plant species. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2577618/">predicts</a> that 99.9% of critically endangered species and 67% of endangered species will be lost within the next 100 years. In an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/animals-going-extinct-recovery-3-million-years-2018-10">October study published in the journal PNAS</a>, Danish researchers wrote that so many mammal species will go extinct in the next 50 years that Earth's evolutionary diversity won't recover for at least 3 million years. <ul class="read-more-links"><li>Read more about mass extinctions:</li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/earths-sixth-mass-extinction-is-already-happening-2014-7" data-read-more-link="" data-e2e-name="read-more-link">Earth Is On The Cusp Of A Sixth Mass Extinction</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/climate-change-is-causing-animal-extinction-2015-8" data-read-more-link="" data-e2e-name="read-more-link">Life on Earth will look dramatically different by mid-century</a></li><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/afp-sixth-mass-extinction-is-here-us-study-2015-6" data-read-more-link="" data-e2e-name="read-more-link">Forget being 'on the edge' - Earth is entering a sixth mass extinction</a></li></ul> <div class="margin-top"> <h3>NOW WATCH: <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/beards-facial-hair-men-cant-grow-dermatologist-testosterone-2018-11">The reason some men can't grow full beards, according to a dermatologist</a></h3> <div> </div> </div>

Scientists have discovered that Earth's worst mass extinction was caused by climate change. It was called the 'Great Dying.'

<ul class="summary-list"><li>After five years, scientists have solved the mystery of the octopus garden.</li><li>Octopuses off California's coast gather in herds around hidden deep-sea vents to mate and lay eggs.</li></ul>Parting the black blanket of the <a href="https://www.insider.com/2010-oceangate-stockton-rush-mission-flooded-deep-sea-explorer-says-2023-7">deep sea</a> with the headlights of their submarine, scientists stumbled upon a mystery — 6,000 <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/study-brain-activity-octopuses-sleep-dreaming-like-humans-neuroscience-2023-6">octopuses</a>, stacked in rows along jagged stabs of sea rock, glittering like pearls. That was five years ago. The scientists nicknamed it an <a href="https://www.insider.com/worlds-largest-deep-sea-octopus-nursery-2018-10">octopus garden</a>, and as far as anyone knows, it's the largest gathering of pearl octopuses ever seen, said Jim Berry, a marine ecologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.The team estimates the total population could exceed 20,000 octopuses. "It's just an astounding scene. And then immediately, you wonder, why are they there," Berry told Insider. Especially since this type of octopus is usually solitary. Berry said it was quickly obvious that the octopuses were breeding, but it took longer for him and his collaborators to determine why they might have picked that location. <h2>An evolutionary edge </h2><div type="image" title="A portion of a photomosaic produced following surveys of the Octopus Garden with MBARI’s remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Doc Ricketts and the Low- Altitude Survey System (LASS) sensor suite developed by engineers in MBARI’s Seafloor Mapping Lab. This composite of two-millimeter resolution photography allowed researchers to count individual octopus nests and estimate the total number of nests at the Octopus Garden." height="1546" width="1920" msid="103307809" hostid="261" sizebytes="289500"></div>Normally, deep sea octopuses have to work really hard to reproduce. The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/how-deep-is-the-ocean-2023-6?_gl=1*1fxjisg*_ga*MTIwNDA4ODEzOS4xNjg3NTQxMjE5*_ga_E21CV80ZCZ*MTY5MzU4NTAzOC44LjEuMTY5MzU4NTE1Ny41OC4wLjA.">cold temperatures and harsh conditions</a> make the octopus eggs take four years to hatch, Berry said. But the octopuses that made their nursery here cut that time in half, taking roughly two years to reproduce.The scientists think that the cephalopods are using the warmer waters to speed up their egg maturation and the rocky walls as a place to store them, Berry and his colleagues report in a <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adg3247" target="_blank" rel="noopener">study published in Science Advances.</a>These two advantages mean that the octopuses were able to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/s-africa-extinct-species-buried-dead-100000-years-before-humans-2023-6">reproduce faster, and easier,</a> Berry added."It's really tough to <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/these-7-animals-have-crazy-adaptations-to-help-them-to-survive-in-their-habitats-2016-7">make a living in the deep sea</a>. And these octopuses have found a way to find thermal springs so that they can improve their reproductive success," he said.<h2>The octopus garden of death and birth</h2><div type="image" title="A male pearl octopus (Muusoctopus robustus) at the Octopus Garden, located near Davidson Seamount off the Central California at a depth of approximately 3,200 meters." height="960" width="1920" msid="103307810" hostid="261" sizebytes="126346"></div>When the garden was first discovered, Berry was immediately interested. In fourteen dives over five years Berry and the team, with their <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-unveils-underwater-drone-strike-russian-warships-2023-8">uncrewed submarine</a>, saw adult male and female octopuses, their eggs, and their corpses.Because crucially, and cruelly, pearl octopuses <a href="https://www.mbari.org/news/scientists-solve-mystery-of-why-thousands-of-octopus-migrate-to-deep-sea-thermal-springs/#:~:text=Like%20most%20other%20cephalopods%2C%20pearl,adult%20octopus%20that%20have%20died." target="_blank" rel="noopener">die shortly after they reproduce</a>. That means <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/deep-sea-creatures-feast-dead-whales-octupuses-ocean-2019-10">ocean scavengers also frequent</a> the area, picking through the remains of the late parents. This makes the site a place for death and rebirth. So the octopuses found a special spot reserved for those epic moments at the bookends of life. The rest of their life, you'll find them drifting amongst the muddy bottoms of the deep sea, scavenging, the study said. <h2>More ingenious cephalopods may exist</h2><h2><div type="image" title="An aggregation of female pearl octopus (Muusoctopus robustus) nesting at the Octopus Garden, located near Davidson Seamount off the Central California at a depth of approximately 3,200 meters." height="1080" width="1440" msid="103307812" hostid="261" sizebytes="261042"></div></h2>This site, called the Davidson Seamount, is an extinct underwater volcano that sits about 10,500 feet underwater <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/998944" target="_blank" rel="noopener">80 miles southwest</a> of Monterey, California.Prior to 2018, the researchers didn't even know there were volcanic vents in the area, Berry said. Humans have only charted about 5% of the ocean, <a href="https://oceanliteracy.unesco.org/ocean-exploration/#:~:text=In%20fact%2C%20most%20of%20the,its%20depths%2C%20are%20still%20unknown." target="_blank" rel="noopener">UNESCO estimates</a>. So, there could be many other ingenious pods of cephalopods doing similar things across the sea, Berry said. This is why it's crucial to take care of our oceans before we <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/toxic-algae-california-central-coast-killing-sea-lions-dolphins-2023-6">impact them in ways</a> that forever change their unique environments, he said. "As we explore more of the deep sea, we find more and more that it's not just a homogeneous, deep, sort of mud-covered pit. There are special places that play a large role in either the geology or the biology or ecology of different areas."

Photos show 6,000 octopuses in one spot. It's the largest known gathering ever found and a mystery that scientists only just solved.

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tardigrade-survival-shows-life-hard-to-destroy-2017-7">Tardigrades</a> are <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tardigrades-survive-being-shot-gun-2021-5">nearly indestructible</a> organisms that have existed for at least 540 million years.</li><li>But their tiny size makes finding fossilized <keyword id="12025769" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="tardigrades" source="Orion">tardigrades</keyword> is hard. </li><li>A new study describes a tardigrade fossil scientists found in amber from the Dominican Republic. </li></ul>Tardigrades have a reputation as some of the hardiest critters in the animal kingdom.It's well-earned: The microscopic creatures can survive <a href="http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(08)00805-1">in the vacuum of space</a>, inside a volcano, and in an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tiny-animal-bodies-found-under-3500-feet-of-antarctic-ice-2019-1">Antarctic lake more than half-a-mile underground</a>. They have even returned to normal functioning after being <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/tardigrades-survive-being-frozen-for-30-years-2016-2">frozen for three decades</a>. The organisms have been on Earth for at least 540 million years, but only two fossilized tardigrades had ever been found - until this week, when researchers announced a third.According to <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2021.1760">a study published Wednesday</a>, scientists discovered this new tardigrade fossil in amber found in the Dominican Republic. "The discovery of a fossil tardigrade is truly a once-in-a-generation event," Phil Barden, a biologist at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who coauthored the new study, said <a href="https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/930499">in a press release</a>. "What is so remarkable is that tardigrades are a ubiquitous ancient lineage that has seen it all on Earth, from the fall of the dinosaurs to the rise of terrestrial colonization of plants. Yet, they are like a ghost lineage for paleontologists, with almost no fossil record."Barden's group determined that the fossil is 16 million years old and is a previously undiscovered type of tardigrade called Paradoryphoribius chronocaribbeus.<h2>The fossil was so tiny, scientists didn't spot it for months</h2><div type="image" title="tardigrade" height="750" width="999" msid="86869767" hostid="261"></div>Tardigrades are also known as water bears or moss piglets - apt nicknames for 0.05-inch-long organisms that, under a microscope, look like eight-legged potatoes with scrunched-up faces and tiny paws.The critters can withstand temperatures between minus 458 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 272 degrees Celsius) and 304 degrees Fahrenheit (151 degrees Celsius), and pressure up to <a href="http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/topics/tardigrade/index.html">six times that of the deepest part of Earth's oceans</a>.They're able to survive temperatures and conditions that would be lethal to humans, because water bears - like their namesake mammal - can enter a state of hibernation during which they go without water and oxygen.But although tardigrades are nearly indestructible in life, they lack the hard tissues that would help their bodies persist after death as <keyword id="11954588" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="fossils" source="Orion">fossils</keyword> in rock. So an amber tomb is one of the only ways tardigrades can be preserved over millennia.That, coupled with their tiny size, means the chances that scientists find ancient tardigrades are slim.<div type="image" title="tardigrades amber" height="4938" width="4938" msid="86869769" hostid="261"></div>In fact, Barden said, his group didn't spot this new fossil for months in their New Jersey lab, even as they closely studied the three ants, beetle, and flower that were fossilized in the same piece of amber. The ancient tardigrade's body was about six-tenths of a millimeter long - less than the width of a credit card.<h2>Using tardigrade guts to classify a new species</h2><div type="image" title="tardigrade microscope" height="939" width="2570" msid="86869771" hostid="261"></div>All three of the fossilized tardigrades scientists have discovered were found in amber. One species was found near Cedar Lake in Manitoba, Canada, in 1964, and was about 78 million years old. The other, which popped out of an amber deposit in New Jersey two decades ago, dates back 92 million years.But this new addition to the tardigrade fossil record is especially valuable because it was close enough to the amber's surface for scientists to study its body parts and organs.Using a special type of microscope, Barden's group was able to study the ancient tardigrade's mouth and claws, as well as reconstruct what its throat and guts looked like. <div type="image" title="tardigrade claw" height="1880" width="2507" msid="86869774" hostid="261"></div>That helped the group figure out that the specimen was a new kind of tardigrade, belonging to a separate genus and species. "For the first time, we've visualized the internal anatomy of the foregut in a tardigrade fossil and found combinations of characters in this specimen that we don't see in living organisms now," Marc Mapalo, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University who led the study, said in the release.About 1,300 tardigrade species are alive today. Fossils like this one, Mapalo said, help paleontologists better understand how these creatures evolved and survived all five major mass extinctions on Earth.

Scientists discovered a 16-million-year-old fossilized tardigrade trapped in amber - a 'once-in-a-generation event'

<ul class="summary-list"><li>"Fireball," a new <keyword id="35012" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="documentary">documentary</keyword> about meteors directed by <keyword id="229916" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Werner-Herzog">Werner Herzog</keyword> and Clive Oppenheimer, premiered Friday on Apple TV+. </li><li>The documentary explores the role that <keyword id="41531" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="space">space</keyword> rocks have played in shaping the world's history.</li></ul>On November 7, 1492, a fiery space rock whistled through the sky. It rocketed into a wheat field near the town of Ensisheim, in modern-day France, punching a hole 3 feet deep into the soil. A young boy was its only witness, according to historical accounts. Ensisheim at that point was the headquarters of Austrian troops. Just weeks after the meteor's arrival, the Austrian military commander, King Maximilian, came to the town on his way to battle the French. Upon learning about the impact, Maximilian declared it to be a sign of divine favor – and the town believed him.<div type="image" title="Fireball_Photo_0102" height="2592" width="4608" msid="79225919" hostid="261"></div>"For those people, wonderful supernatural signs in the heavens were messages," Professor Simon Schaffer, of Cambridge University, says in <a href="https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/fireball-visitors-from-darker-worlds/umc.cmc.4kxqi7mmx247xjrdfll0lsme1?at=1000lDR&amp;itscg=MC_20000&amp;itsct=atvp_brand_omd&amp;mttnagencyid=1625&amp;mttncc=US&amp;mttngadurl=https%3A%2F%2Ftv.apple.com%2Fus%2Fmovie%2Ffireball-visitors-from-darker-worlds%2Fumc.cmc.4kxqi7mmx247xjrdfll0lsme1%3F&amp;mttngmo=&amp;mttnmyad=472470645547&amp;mttnmysite=uqa99n2zg0&amp;mttnpid=305109&amp;mttnsiteid=143238&amp;mttnsub1=b&amp;mttnsub2=c&amp;mttnsub3=s4kLbwLsc_472470645547_uqa99n2zg0_c&amp;mttnsubad=OUS2019882-1&amp;mttnsubadgpname=kwd-296703568482&amp;mttnsubadgpref=115212621070&amp;mttnsubadref=&amp;mttnsubcmp=11352840452&amp;mttnsubkw=%2Bfireball&amp;mttnsubpid=g&amp;mttnsubplmnt=;mttnsubcmp=11352840452&amp;mttnsubkw=%2Bfireball&amp;mttnsubpid=g&amp;mttnsubplmnt=">"Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds," a new documentary</a> from filmmaker Werner Herzog about meteorites. "This was, as it were, an email sent from God to the subjects of Maximilian to tell them that his rule was legitimate, that he'd defeat his enemies, and that they should obey his command."Herzog co-directed the documentary with British volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer. It premiered Friday on Apple TV+ and takes viewers on a sightseeing tour of some of the world's most historic meteorites and impact craters. The film also features the people who study these space rocks. This is the second documentary Herzog and Oppenheimer have made together; the previous one, <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/80066073">"Into the Inferno,"</a> was about volcanoes. With "Fireball," the pair hope to further elevate <keyword id="41551" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="100" keywordseo="science">science</keyword> through filmmaking."We always said, 'this has to be a new form,'" Herzog told Business Insider. "'We should depart from the National Geographic <keyword id="406" type="ENTERTAINMENT" weightage="60" keywordseo="Movies">movies</keyword>. Yes, they have very good stuff, but let's put it on a different level. This sense of awe, the raw excitement.'" <h2>'Stones that are falling from the heavens'</h2><div type="image" title="Fireball_Photo_0107" height="960" width="960" msid="79225920" hostid="261"></div>In the documentary, Herzog and Oppenheimer visit the Vatican, where a Jesuit priest named Brother Guy Consolmagno presides over an <a href="http://www.vaticanobservatory.va/content/specolavaticana/en/research/facilities/meteorite-collection.html">extensive meteorite collection</a>. The film also includes shaky footage of the Black Stone, a sacred rock in the city of Mecca that Muslims circle during their pilgrimages. It <a href="https://opentextbc.ca/astronomyopenstax/chapter/meteorites-stones-from-heaven/">might be a meteorite</a>, though researchers have not been allowed to study it. "We found footage shot by a Pilgrim on his cell phone," Herzog said of the footage shown. "Like metal particles attracted by a magnet, everybody's converging and screaming in this hustle, and jockeying for position for touching or kissing it. It's just phenomenal, phenomenal."Each scene in the film relates to the central premise: that wherever they've fallen, meteorites have shaped human political and religious life. "These are stones that are falling from the heavens," Oppenheimer told Business Insider. "This is some clue that the gods are intervening in human affairs."Of course, the documentary does not neglect Earth's most famous asteroid impact. About 66 million years ago, a giant space rock <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/asteroid-struck-perfect-angle-to-doom-dinosaurs-study-2020-5">slammed into the Yucatán Peninsula</a> in modern-day Mexico with a force equivalent to millions of nuclear bombs. It triggered a mile-high tsunami, acidified the oceans, and released billions of tons of sulfur that blocked sunlight and cooled Earth. An estimated three quarters of all plant and animal species on Earth died as a result, including the dinosaurs. That mass extinction eventually paved the way for mammals to reign. "We probably wouldn't be here ourselves, Homo sapiens, as a species, were it not for this colossal impact," Oppenheimer says in the documentary. The impact crater is located near Chicxulub Puerto, which Herzog describes in the film as "a beach resort so godforsaken you want to cry."<h2>Tracking space rocks before they hit</h2>Asteroids at any time have the potential to impact the world's future, the new film reminds viewers. In the documentary's second half, Herzog and Oppenheimer visit the Pan-STARRS Operational Center in Hawaii, where astronomers scan rows of computer monitors for signs of asteroids that might become meteorites by entering Earth's atmosphere.<div type="image" title="Fireball_Photo_0104" height="2688" width="4032" msid="79225921" hostid="261"></div>Of the 25 million bits and chunks of space debris that become meteors, most burn up in the atmosphere. Even most of the ones that land, becoming meteorites, are too tiny to make much of an impact either. If the Pan-STARRS team does detect a large asteroid, their options then depends on its size. The group could likely warn people living in the asteroid's path. But a very large space rock — say a few kilometers in diameter — could crash with the force of the Chicxulub asteroid, and escape would be impossible.Programs like Pan-STARRS also don't catch everything; NASA's scanning program, for instance, detected less than half of all <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/asteroid-detection-mission-neocam-nasa-funding-astronaut-support-2018-11">"city killer" asteroids</a> larger than about 460 feet wide in 2019. If the Hawaiian observatory detected an asteroid heading toward the US, Herzog said, he knows how he'd spent his last few hours: "I would start shooting a movie."

Werner Herzog's new film, 'Fireball,' explores the power and mystery of meteorites

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Climate scientists Deepti Singh and Ben Cook debunk 13 <keyword id="25945" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="myths">myths</keyword> about <keyword id="6366055" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="global-warming">global warming</keyword>.</li><li>They talk about the relationship between climate and weather and renewable energy.</li><li>Singh and Cook dive deep into the role of carbon dioxide and more on this episode of "Debunked."</li></ul>Benjamin Cook: "Global warming is caused by cow farts."Deepti Singh: It's not by their farts, but it's by belching.Cook: "A few degrees' difference is not a big deal." And the way I always like to think about it too is like your body's temperature. If your temperature is three or four degrees warmer, then you're seriously sick."It's too late to do anything about it." Unless you're Elon Musk and gonna head off towards Mars, we're all stuck here, so we should try to figure out how we can make it the best planet we can.Singh: I'm Deepti Singh. I'm an assistant professor in the School of the <keyword id="6356826" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="ENVIRONMENT">Environment</keyword> at Washington State University. I've been studying <keyword id="6361617" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="climate-change">climate change</keyword> for about 11 years, and I study extreme weather events and how human activities are influencing them.Cook: My name is Benjamin Cook, and I'm a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. I've been working there for about 14 years now. And I study how droughts are changing with global warming and climate change.Singh: And today we'll be debunking myths about global warming.Cook: Myths from pop culture. Oh, boy, I'm glad you got this one, Deepti. "The sun is causing global warming."Singh: Changes in the amount of energy we get from the sun do affect our climate. But over the last 150 years, we know that because the amount of energy we're getting from the sun has not changed significantly over this period. Satellites have been recording the amount of solar radiation that our planet receives. I think Ben has a graph that shows that.Cook: And what we're looking at here on the yellow is the amount of energy that's coming from the sun, and red is global temperatures. It's pretty clear that the amount of energy we're getting from the sun has been more or less flat for the last several decades, even as temperatures continue to go up and up.Singh: "Scientists don't agree on what causes climate change."Cook: 100% of the climate scientists on this Skype call agree.Singh: If you review the published literature in reputable journals by reputable scientists, all those papers agree that climate change is caused by human activities.Cook: There's really no other explanation that fits the data. We've looked at the sun. We've looked at just natural variations in circulation in the ocean, in the atmosphere. We've looked at volcanoes. We've looked at changes in ecosystems. And at the end of the day, the only thing that can adequately explain the degree of warming that we've seen over the last 150 years is human greenhouse gas emissions, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels. There's a real clear incentive for people to find some other explanation. Nobody can come up with even a plausible alternative hypothesis."Global warming is caused by cow farts."Singh: It's not by their farts, but it's by belching. Agriculture is a pretty substantial contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, close to 25%. It's not the whole 25%, but it's a good chunk.Cook: It's important to note, too, that even the cow burps that are producing this methane is not natural. It's all part of a kind of human agricultural system. So blaming it all on cows doesn't take people off the hook.Singh: "Plants and animals will adapt."Cook: So, we know that in the past, plants and animals have adapted to climate change, but there's a few fundamental different things now that are very likely to make it quite difficult. In addition, it's not just climate change that's threatening plants and animals, it's habitat fragmentation, it's pollution, it's a variety of other environmental stressors. And so once you kind of put climate change on top of pollution, on top of habitat loss, then it becomes much, much more difficult.Singh: And just to add to that, I think the extinction rate of species is much higher than the natural extinction rate. And it's partly driven by the processes that Ben just mentioned.Cook: Myths from social media.Singh: "Global warming is natural."Cook: So, we know in the past that climate can change really dramatically from natural causes. The climate during the time of the dinosaurs is very different from the climate during the time of the last ice age. But the changes that we're seeing right now for the most part are not natural. The warming that we're seeing is very likely the fastest warming we've seen anytime in the last several thousand years. It coincides directly with the industrial revolution and the burning of fossil fuels and widespread deforestation. You can look at almost any natural cause, and none of them are sufficient to explain the warming that we've seen in recent decades.Singh: "Carbon dioxide is the problem."So, CO2 isn't the problem. It's the increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere that is resulting in the rapid warming we're seeing over the last century, which is the problem.Cook: So, carbon dioxide is one of these gases that we call greenhouse gases, because they're responsible for the greenhouse effect, which basically helps trap energy on Earth and make things much, much warmer than it otherwise would have been. It's not a big stretch then to observe that if we start increasing CO2 concentrations, we're gonna trap more energy and we're gonna warm up.Singh: Before the industrial revolution, CO2 levels were close to, like, 280 parts per million. And now we're at close to 418 parts per million. So that's a pretty large change in the concentration.Cook: And the fact is that pretty much anytime the world was warmer, CO2 levels in the atmosphere were higher. And anytime the world was cooler, CO2 concentrations were lower."A few degrees' difference is not a big deal." And the way I always like to think about it too is like your body's temperature. We're all supposed to be about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Even one degree or two degrees of warming is considered a low-grade fever. And if your temperature is three or four degrees warmer, then you're seriously sick.Singh: So, just to give you a sense, the Earth has warmed by about one degree over the last century. That one degree is an average temperature around our planet. That means some parts of our planet are warming faster than others. I come from India. We have a lot of people that live below poverty in the country. And most of those people, for example, don't have an air conditioner to deal with extreme heat events. So it depends on who we're talking about when we say it's not a big deal, because there are some people around the planet that have the capacity to adapt or cope with these kind of extreme events and with the warming that we've experienced, and then there are billions of people that do not have the capacity to cope with even small changes.Myths that we, climate scientists, hear the most."Global warming will destroy the planet by 2030."Cook: Just like there's kind of climate deniers who don't know what they're talking about, there's climate doomists who also don't know what they're talking about. This whole idea of the planet being destroyed by 2030 comes out of discussion about, how much time do we have to keep global warming under two degrees? And so it's very likely that we need to kind of get emissions under control by 2030 to keep it under two degrees. It doesn't mean that the world is going to explode or we're all going to be consigned to a fiery "Mad Max" kind of hellscape. It just means that it'll be warmer than we maybe wanted it to be.Singh: When they say it's gonna destroy the planet, well, the planet's not going to blow up. But it does mean that the way of life and the livelihoods and the things people depend on are going to be affected. There are already people who have been displaced because of sea-level rise, people that are experiencing life-threatening heat conditions.Cook: The impacts of climate change are not going to be equally felt. These kind of blanket statements are very, very dismissive. And I think they can take attention away from the people who are likely to be most vulnerable to climate change.Singh: It's not really helpful to put a date on it. I think we just need to know that delaying action on climate change is going to just cost more to society.Cook: "Global warming is China's fault."Singh: So, to address that myth, I think there's one important fact we need to understand. When CO2 is emitted, it can stay in the atmosphere for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The CO2 concentrations we're seeing today are a consequence of emissions that have happened over a much longer period, over the last century. And most of those emissions are associated with the industrial revolution and development of countries like the US and industrialized nations in Europe. If we look at emissions this year specifically, sure, the emissions from China are close to what the emissions from the US are. But those emissions are being used to produce products and goods that are being used in other parts of the world. So I don't think it's fair to say that China's responsible when we're all benefiting from the products that are produced there.Cook: I think even today, it's worth thinking not just about how much is a country emitting, but how much are they emitting per person? And I have another visual aid here. You can pretty clearly see the highest-intensity emitters are places like Australia, the US, Canada, Russia, Saudi Arabia. China isn't even in the top 10.Singh: It's also a complicated problem because the well-being of people is tied to their consumption of energy. So as long as we're doing that in a sustainable, cleaner way, I think we all have to benefit from it."Renewable energy is too expensive to be realistic."Cook: Renewable energy is getting cheaper all the time, even faster than we expected. And there's a lot of places where it actually can outcompete some fossil fuel sources. For example, I believe wind and solar is more cost-effective than coal in pretty much the entire United States.Singh: The cost of producing solar panels today is a fraction of what it was just a decade ago. I keep going back to India because that's another region I'm very familiar with. There are a lot of villages there that have been provided energy because they're using solar and wind, which would not have been possible if we were still depending upon CO2. Now, there's still challenges.Cook: We're not going to kind of be able to switch everything overnight, but it's like any other technology. It's getting cheaper over time. It's getting more efficient. And the more we kind of invest in it, then the faster we'll get to the point that we'll be able to use it for most of our needs."Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming."Singh: So, the right question to ask is not whether an extreme event would have been possible without warming, but it's to ask how the event itself was affected by warming. For example, a tropical storm or a tropical cyclone might result in heavier precipitation because a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture. And so there's more moisture, more fuel in the storm, which results in heavier precipitation and likely more flooding.Cook: I think a good analogy is a professional athlete on steroids. Athletes need to have some kind of innate fitness and ability, but if you go on steroids, you're a bit more likely to hit a home run. So CO2 is kind of like the steroids of the climate system, and it's just intensifying everything that's already there.Singh: "The temperature record is unreliable." What do you have to say about that, Ben?Cook: The record we have of warming for the last 150 years is constructed from basically thousands of thermometer records from around the world. Climate scientists often get accused of modifying the temperature record to make it look like it's warming more than it actually is. At least half a dozen groups around the world who are all independently putting together these records and estimating the global temperature changes that we've seen over the last two centuries, and they're all basically getting the same answer. All this data is publicly available! Anybody can go and get this data and come up with their own calculation. And the fact is that nobody has shown one that is credibly different."It's too late to do anything about it."Singh: It's easy for us to say, "Well, it's too late to do anything about it. Let's throw our hands up and not do anything about it." But there is a lot we can do about it, both individually as well as at the international level. It doesn't have to be a major change, but reducing our consumption of certain meat products that are extremely energy-intensive is one way in which we can affect greenhouse emissions.Cook: The decisions we make today, we are going to have to deal with, our children are going to have to live with. I will never say that people should not recycle or reduce their car use or eat less meat. But at the end of the day, the big lever is just going to be government. And 'cause the government can set policies that can incentivize actions.Singh: It's also a weird time to say that it's too late to do anything about it, because we're at a point in time when we have so much information. There are people working on technologies to address climate change and to make our environment cleaner and better. So this is not a time for us to put our hands up. It's our time to take action.Cook: Climate change itself is not pass-fail. Keeping warming to three degrees is better than four degrees. Keeping warming to two and a half degrees is better than three degrees. Keeping warming to two degrees is better than all of those things. We're all stuck here, so we should try to figure out how we can make it the best planet we can. Climate change is a global problem, and it's going to require a global solution and people to actually kind of work together.

Climate scientists debunk 13 myths about global warming

The <keyword id="6375923" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="Climate">climate</keyword> may be heating up less in response to greenhouse-gas emissions than was once thought. But that does not mean the problem is going away.
OVER the past 15 years air temperatures at the Earth’s surface have been flat while greenhouse-gas emissions have continued to soar. The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO2 put there by humanity since 1750. And yet, as James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, observes, "the five-year mean global temperature has been flat for a decade."
<table class="image-container float_right" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"></div>The EconomistChart 1. </td></tr></table>Temperatures fluctuate over short periods, but this lack of new warming is a surprise. Ed Hawkins, of the University of Reading, in Britain, points out that surface temperatures since 2005 are already at the low end of the range of projections derived from 20 climate models (see chart 1). If they remain flat, they will fall outside the models’ range within a few years.
The mismatch between rising greenhouse-gas emissions and not-rising temperatures is among the biggest puzzles in climate science just now. It does not mean <keyword id="6366055" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="global-warming">global warming</keyword> is a delusion. Flat though they are, temperatures in the first decade of the 21st century remain almost 1°C above their level in the first decade of the 20th. But the puzzle does need explaining.
The mismatch might mean that--for some unexplained reason--there has been a temporary lag between more carbon dioxide and higher temperatures in 2000-10. Or it might be that the 1990s, when temperatures were rising fast, was the anomalous period. Or, as an increasing body of research is suggesting, it may be that the climate is responding to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in ways that had not been properly understood before. This possibility, if true, could have profound significance both for climate science and for environmental and social policy.
<h3>The insensitive planet</h3>
The term scientists use to describe the way the climate reacts to changes in carbon-dioxide levels is "climate sensitivity". This is usually defined as how much hotter the Earth will get for each doubling of CO2 concentrations. So-called equilibrium sensitivity, the commonest measure, refers to the temperature rise after allowing all feedback mechanisms to work (but without accounting for changes in vegetation and ice sheets).
Carbon dioxide itself absorbs infra-red at a consistent rate. For each doubling of CO2 levels you get roughly 1°C of warming. A rise in concentrations from preindustrial levels of 280 parts per million (ppm) to 560ppm would thus warm the Earth by 1°C. If that were all there was to worry about, there would, as it were, be nothing to worry about. A 1°C rise could be shrugged off. But things are not that simple, for two reasons. One is that rising CO2 levels directly influence phenomena such as the amount of water vapour (also a greenhouse gas) and clouds that amplify or diminish the temperature rise. This affects equilibrium sensitivity directly, meaning doubling carbon concentrations would produce more than a 1°C rise in temperature. The second is that other things, such as adding soot and other aerosols to the atmosphere, add to or subtract from the effect of CO2. All serious climate scientists agree on these two lines of reasoning. But they disagree on the size of the change that is predicted.
The Intergovernmental Panel on <keyword id="6361617" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="60" keywordseo="Climate-Change">Climate Change</keyword> (IPCC), which embodies the mainstream of climate science, reckons the answer is about 3°C, plus or minus a degree or so. In its most recent assessment (in 2007), it wrote that "the equilibrium climate sensitivity…is likely to be in the range 2°C to 4.5°C with a best estimate of about 3°C and is very unlikely to be less than 1.5°C. Values higher than 4.5°C cannot be excluded." The IPCC’s next assessment is due in September. A draft version was recently leaked. It gave the same range of likely outcomes and added an upper limit of sensitivity of 6°C to 7°C.
A rise of around 3°C could be extremely damaging. The IPCC’s earlier assessment said such a rise could mean that more areas would be affected by drought; that up to 30% of species could be at greater risk of extinction; that most corals would face significant biodiversity losses; and that there would be likely increases of intense tropical cyclones and much higher sea levels.
<h3>New Model Army</h3>
Other recent studies, though, paint a different picture. An unpublished report by the Research Council of Norway, a government-funded body, which was compiled by a team led by Terje Berntsen of the University of Oslo, uses a different method from the IPCC’s. It concludes there is a 90% probability that doubling CO2 emissions will increase temperatures by only 1.2-2.9°C, with the most likely figure being 1.9°C. The top of the study’s range is well below the IPCC’s upper estimates of likely sensitivity.
This study has not been peer-reviewed; it may be unreliable. But its projections are not unique. Work by Julia Hargreaves of the Research Institute for Global Change in Yokohama, which was published in 2012, suggests a 90% chance of the actual change being in the range of 0.5-4.0°C, with a mean of 2.3°C. This is based on the way the climate behaved about 20,000 years ago, at the peak of the last ice age, a period when carbon-dioxide concentrations leapt. Nic Lewis, an independent climate scientist, got an even lower range in a study accepted for publication: 1.0-3.0°C, with a mean of 1.6°C. His calculations reanalysed work cited by the IPCC and took account of more recent temperature data. In all these calculations, the chances of climate sensitivity above 4.5°C become vanishingly small.
If such estimates were right, they would require revisions to the science of climate change and, possibly, to public policies. If, as conventional wisdom has it, global temperatures could rise by 3°C or more in response to a doubling of emissions, then the correct response would be the one to which most of the world pays lip service: rein in the warming and the greenhouse gases causing it. This is called "mitigation", in the jargon. Moreover, if there were an outside possibility of something catastrophic, such as a 6°C rise, that could justify drastic interventions. This would be similar to taking out disaster insurance. It may seem an unnecessary expense when you are forking out for the premiums, but when you need it, you really need it. Many economists, including William Nordhaus of Yale University, have made this case.
If, however, temperatures are likely to rise by only 2°C in response to a doubling of carbon emissions (and if the likelihood of a 6°C increase is trivial), the calculation might change. Perhaps the world should seek to adjust to (rather than stop) the greenhouse-gas splurge. There is no point buying earthquake insurance if you do not live in an earthquake zone. In this case more adaptation rather than more mitigation might be the right policy at the margin. But that would be good advice only if these new estimates really were more reliable than the old ones. And different results come from different models.
One type of model--general-circulation models, or GCMs--use a bottom-up approach. These divide the Earth and its atmosphere into a grid which generates an enormous number of calculations in order to imitate the climate system and the multiple influences upon it. The advantage of such complex models is that they are extremely detailed. Their disadvantage is that they do not respond to new temperature readings. They simulate the way the climate works over the long run, without taking account of what current observations are. Their sensitivity is based upon how accurately they describe the processes and feedbacks in the climate system.
The other type--energy-balance models--are simpler. They are top-down, treating the Earth as a single unit or as two hemispheres, and representing the whole climate with a few equations reflecting things such as changes in greenhouse gases, volcanic aerosols and global temperatures. Such models do not try to describe the complexities of the climate. That is a drawback. But they have an advantage, too: unlike the GCMs, they explicitly use temperature data to estimate the sensitivity of the climate system, so they respond to actual climate observations.
The IPCC’s estimates of climate sensitivity are based partly on GCMs. Because these reflect scientists’ understanding of how the climate works, and that understanding has not changed much, the models have not changed either and do not reflect the recent hiatus in rising temperatures. In contrast, the Norwegian study was based on an energy-balance model. So were earlier influential ones by Reto Knutti of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Zurich; by Piers Forster of the University of Leeds and Jonathan Gregory of the University of Reading; by Natalia Andronova and Michael Schlesinger, both of the University of Illinois; and by Magne Aldrin of the Norwegian Computing Centre (who is also a co-author of the new Norwegian study). All these found lower climate sensitivities. The paper by Drs Forster and Gregory found a central estimate of 1.6°C for equilibrium sensitivity, with a 95% likelihood of a 1.0-4.1°C range. That by Dr Aldrin and others found a 90% likelihood of a 1.2-3.5°C range.
It might seem obvious that energy-balance models are better: do they not fit what is actually happening? Yes, but that is not the whole story. Myles Allen of Oxford University points out that energy-balance models are better at representing simple and direct climate feedback mechanisms than indirect and dynamic ones. Most greenhouse gases are straightforward: they warm the climate. The direct impact of volcanoes is also straightforward: they cool it by reflecting sunlight back. But volcanoes also change circulation patterns in the atmosphere, which can then warm the climate indirectly, partially offsetting the direct cooling. Simple energy-balance models cannot capture this indirect feedback. So they may exaggerate volcanic cooling.
This means that if, for some reason, there were factors that temporarily muffled the impact of greenhouse-gas emissions on global temperatures, the simple energy-balance models might not pick them up. They will be too responsive to passing slowdowns. In short, the different sorts of climate model measure somewhat different things.
<h3>Clouds of uncertainty</h3>
This also means the case for saying the climate is less sensitive to CO2 emissions than previously believed cannot rest on models alone. There must be other explanations--and, as it happens, there are: individual climatic influences and feedback loops that amplify (and sometimes moderate) climate change.
Begin with aerosols, such as those from sulphates. These stop the atmosphere from warming by reflecting sunlight. Some heat it, too. But on balance aerosols offset the warming impact of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Most climate models reckon that aerosols cool the atmosphere by about 0.3-0.5°C. If that underestimated aerosols’ effects, perhaps it might explain the lack of recent warming.
Yet it does not. In fact, it may actually be an overestimate. Over the past few years, measurements of aerosols have improved enormously. Detailed data from satellites and balloons suggest their cooling effect is lower (and their warming greater, where that occurs). The leaked assessment from the IPCC (which is still subject to review and revision) suggested that aerosols’ estimated radiative "forcing"--their warming or cooling effect--had changed from minus 1.2 watts per square metre of the Earth’s surface in the 2007 assessment to minus 0.7W/m{+2} now: ie, less cooling.
One of the commonest and most important aerosols is soot (also known as black carbon). This warms the atmosphere because it absorbs sunlight, as black things do. The most detailed study of soot was published in January and also found more net warming than had previously been thought. It reckoned black carbon had a direct warming effect of around 1.1W/m{+2}. Though indirect effects offset some of this, the effect is still greater than an earlier estimate by the United Nations <keyword id="6356826" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="environment">Environment</keyword> Programme of 0.3-0.6W/m{+2}.
All this makes the recent period of flat temperatures even more puzzling. If aerosols are not cooling the Earth as much as was thought, then global warming ought to be gathering pace. But it is not. Something must be reining it back. One candidate is lower climate sensitivity.
A related possibility is that general-circulation climate models may be overestimating the impact of clouds (which are themselves influenced by aerosols). In all such models, clouds amplify global warming, sometimes by a lot. But as the leaked IPCC assessment says, "the cloud feedback remains the most uncertain radiative feedback in climate models." It is even possible that some clouds may dampen, not amplify global warming--which may also help explain the hiatus in rising temperatures. If clouds have less of an effect, climate sensitivity would be lower.
<table class="image-container float_left" width="200"><tr><td><div class="image"></div>The Economist</td></tr></table>So the explanation may lie in the air--but then again it may not. Perhaps it lies in the oceans. But here, too, facts get in the way. Over the past decade the long-term rise in surface seawater temperatures seems to have stalled (see chart 2), which suggests that the oceans are not absorbing as much heat from the atmosphere.
As with aerosols, this conclusion is based on better data from new measuring devices. But it applies only to the upper 700 metres of the sea. What is going on below that--particularly at depths of 2km or more--is obscure. A study in Geophysical Research Letters by Kevin Trenberth of America’s National Centre for Atmospheric Research and others found that 30% of the ocean warming in the past decade has occurred in the deep ocean (below 700 metres). The study says a substantial amount of global warming is going into the oceans, and the deep oceans are heating up in an unprecedented way. If so, that would also help explain the temperature hiatus.
<h3>Double-A minus</h3>
Lastly, there is some evidence that the natural (ie, non-man-made) variability of temperatures may be somewhat greater than the IPCC has thought. A recent paper by Ka-Kit Tung and Jiansong Zhou in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences links temperature changes from 1750 to natural changes (such as sea temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean) and suggests that "the anthropogenic global-warming trends might have been overestimated by a factor of two in the second half of the 20th century." It is possible, therefore, that both the rise in temperatures in the 1990s and the flattening in the 2000s have been caused in part by natural variability.
So what does all this amount to? The scientists are cautious about interpreting their findings. As Dr Knutti puts it, "the bottom line is that there are several lines of evidence, where the observed trends are pushing down, whereas the models are pushing up, so my personal view is that the overall assessment hasn’t changed much."
But given the hiatus in warming and all the new evidence, a small reduction in estimates of climate sensitivity would seem to be justified: a downwards nudge on various best estimates from 3°C to 2.5°C, perhaps; a lower ceiling (around 4.5°C), certainly. If climate scientists were credit-rating agencies, climate sensitivity would be on negative watch. But it would not yet be downgraded.
Equilibrium climate sensitivity is a benchmark in climate science. But it is a very specific measure. It attempts to describe what would happen to the climate once all the feedback mechanisms have worked through; equilibrium in this sense takes centuries--too long for most policymakers. As Gerard Roe of the University of Washington argues, even if climate sensitivity were very high (above, say 7°C), its economic effects would be minuscule under any plausible discount rate because it operates over such long periods. So it is one thing to ask how climate sensitivity might be changing; a different question is to ask what the policy consequences might be.
For that, a more useful measure is the transient climate response (TCR), the temperature you reach after doubling CO2 gradually over 70 years. Unlike the equilibrium response, the transient one can be observed directly; there is much less controversy about it. Most estimates put the TCR at about 1.5°C, with a range of 1-2°C. Isaac Held of America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently calculated his "personal best estimate" for the TCR: 1.4°C, reflecting the new estimates for aerosols and natural variability.
That sounds reassuring: the TCR is below estimates for equilibrium climate sensitivity. But the TCR captures only some of the warming that those 70 years of emissions would eventually generate because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for much longer.
As a rule of thumb, global temperatures rise by about 1.5°C for each trillion tonnes of carbon put into the atmosphere. The world has pumped out half a trillion tonnes of carbon since 1750, and temperatures have risen by 0.8°C. At current rates, the next half-trillion tonnes will be emitted by 2045; the one after that before 2080.
Since CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, this could increase temperatures compared with pre-industrial levels by around 2°C even with a lower sensitivity and perhaps nearer to 4°C at the top end of the estimates. Despite all the work on sensitivity, no one really knows how the climate would react if temperatures rose by as much as 4°C. Hardly reassuring.
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