Science Friday - 2023 Was Hottest Year On Record | The NASA Satellite Studying Plankton

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

The World Meteorological Organization’s report confirms last year had the highest temperatures on record and predicts an even hotter 2024. Also, NASA’s new PACE satellite will study how these tiny creatures could affect Earth’s climate, and how aerosols influence air quality.UN Report Confirms 2023 Was Hottest Year On RecordA new report from the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization shows that last year had the hottest average global temperatures since recording began 174 years ago. Ocean temperatures also reached a 65-year high last year, and 2024 is on track to be even hotter.Ira talks with Jason Dinh, climate editor at Atmos Magazine about that and other top science news of the week including cannibal birds, fighting Dengue fever with bacteria-infected mosquitos and the evolutionary benefit of whale menopause.Why This NASA Satellite Is Studying PlanktonDid you know you can see plankton … from space? Earlier this year, NASA launched a satellite to do exactly that. It’s called PACE, which stands for Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, and ocean Ecosystem, and NASA hopes that the satellite can tell us more about how these tiny creatures interact with Earth’s atmosphere and influence our climate.Some species of plankton, called phytoplankton, are microscopic plants that absorb carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. PACE has equipment that can identify different species of phytoplankton by the kind of light they give off, giving NASA real-time information about their location and population size, which can also aid fisheries and coastal communities when algal blooms occur.PACE will also study how aerosols affect air quality on Earth. Additional instruments on the satellite can differentiate between different kinds of aerosols by studying how they reflect light back into space, which will help scientists refine their climate models so that more accurate forecasts can be made.Ira Flatow talks to Dr. Ivona Cetinic, PACE’s science lead for ocean biogeochemistry, about the satellite, her favorite species of plankton, and how the public can benefit from the data that the mission will provide.Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Did you know you can study plankton from space? Well, earlier this year, NASA launched a satellite to do exactly that. If I would take away plankton now, oceans would die, climate would change. We would not have anything to eat. So it would be a very, very sad place. And probably we wouldn't care because we would be dead. It's Friday, March 22nd, and you're listening to Science Friday. I'm sci-fire producer Dee Petershmit.

Blankton play a super important role in our planet's ecosystem. Not only are they an essential component of our oceans food chain. But many of them also act as the trees of the seas, taking in carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. Which is partly why NASA wanted to launch its new satellite PACE, which stands for plankton, aerosol, cloud, and ocean ecosystem, so they can better understand how these tiny creatures interact with Earth, and if we can use them to mitigate climate change. But first, Irafledo talks with science journalist Jason Dyn about the top news and science this week.

A new report from the World Meteorological Organization shows that last year had the high hottest average global temperatures since they were first recording stuff 174 years ago. Wow. Most concerning is a rise in ocean temperatures and 2024 is on track to break last year's records. Joining me to talk about that and other top science news of the week is Jason Dinn, climate editor at Atmos magazine based in Washington. Welcome back to Science Friday. Thanks for having me, Ira. You are our NSF fellow.

I was. Yes, nice to have you back. Let's get right into this. It's really interesting. Break it down for me. What were the big takeaways from this latest UN climate report? Yeah, so in this report, the WMO Secretary General says that they're, quote, sounding the red alert to the world. The report documents that nearly every single climate record was broken in the last year. So that includes greenhouse gases, land temperatures, water temperatures, glacial melt, sea level rise. Basically, you name it, it was probably broken. These record-breaking conditions were in part due to the El Nino climate patterns that we saw in the last year.

But it's also clear that the big drivers are really good. greenhouse gases and human-caused climate change. And maybe the most troubling part of all of this is that the WMO says that 2024 might even be worse. Right. We're still emitting tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And the year after El Nino does tend to be warmer than average. So in January, we've already seen the hottest January on record. February was the hottest February on record. And just last week, global sea surface temperatures broke daily records for a whole year straight. You know, there's this cynic in me that says, okay, we've heard all of this before. Is anybody going to take any action?

Yeah, so the WMO does acknowledge that there is a glimmer of hope. So renewable energy capacity from wind and solar and hydro rose nearly 50% between 2022 and 2023. And it's also worth noting that even if we pass this pretty dangerous benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, it is still worth it to fight for a rapid and adjust transition to clean energy because every 10th of a good, beyond that that we hold on to really is going to save countless lives. And another bit of not-so-great climate news, I hate they keep following on, a report by the IQ

air people. They're a Swiss air quality organization. And they have found that only seven of 134 countries they monitored met the WHO guidelines for air quality. Well, can you rank the countries for us? Yeah, yeah, sure. So, well, the best were Australia, Estonia, Finland, Granada, Iceland, Mauritius, and New Zealand. And this report, it was based on 30,000 monitoring stations that were measuring what are called PM2.5. They're sometimes called fine particulate matter. These are basically tiny particles, 2.5 microns. So that's smaller than the width of a human hair. These are really dangerous. They kill about 4 million people each year globally. And the World Health Organization says that the safe standard for this is about 5 micrograms per cubic meter.

In the worst case scenario in Bangladesh, the level was about 15 times that. And even here in the U.S., where we've seen things like the Clean Air Act and renewable energy really improve our air quality, we're still at around 9 micrograms per cubic meter. So that's almost double the standard. Who is the worst country? The worst country was Bangladesh, which is around 15 times, and Pakistan was just right behind it at 14 times higher. Well, it's not all terrible news, though. Air quality has improved in the, what, last half century?

Yes, exactly. Air quality has really improved thanks to some really great legislation, like the Clean Air Act. The kind of caveat to that is that climate change really is biting back a little bit. So we know that as the climate changes, air is starting to stagnate in certain places, which allows these pollutants to accumulate. And we're also seeing more severe and frequent wildfires, which themselves are a source of PM2.5. So if you look at the report, Canada actually has worse air quality than the U.S., in part due to those wildfires that turn the skies orange. last year. Who can forget that? We're hoping that doesn't happen again. Let's shift our focus a bit to an infectious disease outbreak in Brazil, and I'm talking about dengue fever. The country plans to release mosquitoes infected with the bacteria to six cities to help stop the outbreak. Tell us how that works. Yeah, so Brazil is really going through this unprecedented outbreak of dengue fever, which is this viral disease that's spread by the mosquito ADZ-EGypdi. And so far in 2024, one and a half million people have caught the disease. That's the total of last year's cases combined. So according to reporting from The Guardian, Brazil is fighting back by releasing these mosquitoes

that are infected with a bacterium called Wolbachia. They've nicknamed them Wolbitos. And they've shown that these mosquitoes that are infected with Wolbachia are actually less likely to transmit dengue to people. So their plan is to release these small batches of wolbitos into the wild, where they'll mate with the natural population, and they actually pass on the bacteria to their offspring through their eggs. So every generation, you're getting more and more coverage of Wolbetos in the city. They piloted this in 2015, and they've released them into five cities in 2017, and now with this major outbreak, they're going to release them in six more. And thanks to these earlier projects, we already have evidence that it's kind of working. So if you look at the city of Niteroy,

They hosted the pilot projects in 2015, and they're the first city to have full coverage of Wolbetos. This year, they've only seen 689 probable cases of Dengue. And if you compare that to Rio, which is less than 100 miles away, and where the Wolbachia trial is at a much smaller scale, Rio is seen over 60,000 probable cases. So, 100 times more Dengue, despite only 12 times more people. Let's continue with the Animal Kingdom for a while. a new study about the Eurasian hoopoe. I don't think a lot of people have seen the Eurasian hoopoe. It's a bird, right?

The bird has some pretty brutal behavior. Cannibalism. Yes. A bird cannibalism. Bird cannibalism. Even worse, it's a sibling cannibalism. So the European hoopo is this really beautiful orange-crested bird, and it gets its name for its whooping sound.

And it does this really gruesome, peculiar thing, which is that chicks will eat their siblings while they're in the nest. Oh, wait, let me back that up for a second. The chicks will eat their siblings. So if you have a nest full of chicks, they're going to eat each other. Yes, exactly. It's the mothers will grab the younger chicks, and they will literally shove them into the

mouths of the older ones who will swallow them whole. And so what these researchers wanted to do was figure out if there is any benefit to this pretty macabre behavior. So they did a couple of experiments using these hoopoe nests. The most critical one is that they moved eggs from one nest to another, and they carefully timed it so that that transferred egg would be the last one to hatch in its new brood by just one day. And they found that that chick was always eaten, as was the chick that was the next youngest. And what was most interesting about this is that the nests that received an extra egg fledged on average two more birds than the nests where the egg was removed. What they think that means is that sibling cannibalism actually does have reproductive benefits

as long as you're on the right side of the eating equation. I never realized how much of a bird-eat-bird world it is. It is a bird-eat bird world, Ira. All right, let's move on to the next story that you brought us. And this is about evolutionary advantage of whales going through menopause. I didn't know any of that happened. Tell me about that. Yeah, honestly, I didn't know this happened until this study came out either.

So this study came out in nature last week. And it gets us one step closer to figuring out why menopause evolved. Evolutionarily speaking, menopause is really counterintuitive, right? If your goal is to have your DNA as widespread as possible in the next generation, then why don't you just keep having offspring till you die? Right. That's what most mammals do, actually, all except for humans and five other species, all of which happen to be whales. So this includes killer whales, false killer whales, beluga whales, short-fin pilot whales, and narwhals. And there is one exception with one population of chimpanzees as of last year.

So this study looked at those five whale species and compared them to 27 non-menopausal ones. And they asked, is there an advantage for the species that go through menopause? They figured out things like how old the whales are and whether they're still making eggs. And really their big finding is that while menopausal whales reproduce as long as long as, as non-menopausal ones of the same size. These menopausal whales live 40 years longer, which suggests that natural selection is favoring mutations that are actually tacking on years

to a whale's life after reproduction stop. That's amazing. 40 years longer. 40 years longer, yeah. And it's still not 100% clear what the benefit of living that long after you stop reproducing is. There are a couple theories.

So one that I like is that, you know, the grandmother whales are actually helping their relatives. So we've seen older killer whales teach younger ones how to hunt, how to take long journeys and even share their food. We can't make conclusions based on this study, especially because this study is based on dead whales and we have to be pretty cautious about what kind of conclusions we're drawing.

But outside experts have said that this is a pretty ingenious way at figuring out whatever we can from what little data we can scrap together. Mother Nature is doing her thing. This last story is about the opposite end of the life cycle, and I'm talking about kitten season is beginning earlier and earlier. result rescue organizations are struggling to keep up. What's going on? First, tell us what kitten season is and what's happening there. Yeah, so this comes from some really great reporting from Sachi Moki at Gris. And what her reporting showed is that, you know, kitten season, when

cats are most reproductively active in the warm months between spring and fall is beginning months earlier than it normally does and it's lasting longer. And while this seems totally adorable, it is really putting a strain on the animal shelters who are strapped with resources to deal with this influx. Some researchers think that climate change might be to blame. So one hypothesis is that as it gets warmer resources like food and rodents to eat are becoming more abundant, which could give the cats more nutrients that they need to start breeding. And of course, all of this is bad news for biodiversity.

Outdoor cats eat basically everything, and they're driving a bunch of species extinct. It's too early to say whether climate change really is to blame, but I can speak for both me and my cat in saying that we're both waiting with baited breath to find out. So we all then be adopting a cat or two? You know, Ira, if there's anything I'm willing to do to save this world, it's welcome more cats into my home. There you go. Thanks, Jason, for taking time to be with us today. Thanks for having me, Ira. It's a pleasure. Jason Din is climate editor at Atmos magazine based right here in Washington. Did you know that you can see plankton from space? Yeah, earlier this year, NASA launched a satellite to do exactly that.

It's called PACE, which stands for plankton, aerosol, cloud, and ocean ecosystem. And NASA hopes that the satellite can tell us more about how these tiny creatures interact with Earth, and can we use them to mitigate climate change? Here to fill in the details is Dr. Ivona, Settinich, science lead for ocean biogeochemistry for Pace, based in famed Greenbelt, Maryland. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. So happy to be here. Nice to have you. I understand you just got the satellite up and running, right? Yes, we launched space like 40 days ago or something like that, and it's running and is doing everything where we wanted to do and even more. So we're really excited.

Wow. I want to hear more about that, but I think we need to get into some of the details about just why you study plankton. Tell us what plankton does. Why is plankton so important to our planet? For sure. So plankton are microscopic creatures that live in every aquatic system and ocean as well. And you can kind of like separate them in zooplankton, which are kind of like teeny tiny animals. And then you have a phytoplankton, which are teeny tiny plant like creatures. And while invisible to our eyes, they're very, very important because they in a sense do three things for us, like three services. First one is they kind of draw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and make it into the sugars that feed most of the food web. in the ocean. So everything that we like, dolphins and things like that. And third thing is the fact that they produce oxygen. So around 50% of the Earth's complete oxygen is produced by phytoplankton.

So that's really important for something that is so teeny and invisible. Wow. And what would our planet look like if we didn't have plankton if it's that important? It would look a lot different. Yes, very, very different. I mean, like the first oxygen came from the creatures that we call plankton today. So without that first oxygen, nothing else would evolve. But if I would take away of plankton now, oceans would die, climate would change, we would not have anything to eat. So it would be a very, very sad place and probably we wouldn't care because we would be dead. Yeah. And another really interesting thing about them is that there's just an enormous

diversity of them in our oceans, right? Yes, that's true. And there's a diversity that we can just usually observe by going out, you know, on the ships and taking samples and looking under the microscope. But ocean is gigantic. And we can't be everywhere. we're with ships. So that's why we built PACE. So we can see this diversity of the plankton from space. All right.

So tell us what now, we're at the point where you can tell us, what does this satellite do? What kind of mission is it on? So PACE, it's the satellite itself, and it carries three different instruments, and which are the ones that are going to give us this view of the earth in an unprecedented way. One is called OCI, which is ocean color instrument,

which is a hyperspectral instrument. So meaning that, think about, you know, you walk through your life, like a cell phone that's kind of like a Nokia, right? Like, you know, the old school Nokia, the flip phone where you take a photo and looks ugly. Right. That's what we had for the last 20 years. And that showed us that Oshut is full of phytoplankton, but we didn't have any idea what type

of phytoplankton is. So PACE will allow us to see that. Well, this allows us differentiation of different types of phytoplankton so we can understand how they're changing, you know, or helping us, or changing the climate, helping our ecosystem, helping our tourism and so on. There's two teeny tiny instruments. they're also attached to Pace and their polarimeters. So they're looking at the color of the ocean,

but they're also looking at ocean and atmosphere from different angles, but also looking at the polarization of the light, which is kind of weird to explain. But think about your sunglasses, you know, when you have it during the summer, and you tilt your head and everything kind of looks different. Right. That's what they're measuring.

They're measuring that polarization. That information can tell us a lot about clouds and aerosols, which are crucial for climate, but also our own health. Yeah, and then that's the other thing. Pace is not just, going to be studying the plankton. It's going to be gathering data on the aerosols, effect on the planet. Tell us why the aerosols are so important. So both aerosols and clouds. So aerosols are crucial, you know, just from the perspective of each of us individually, because those are the things that

are changing the quality of the air. You know, when the air quality goes down, because the smoke comes from the Canadian fires, that's aerosols. Airisoles can also be dust particles. There's many different types of aerosols. Understanding the diversity of the aerosols is as important as understanding diversity of the phytoplankton. What is crucial really that PACE is going to be able to see because it's going to look at both in clouds in aerosols is this teeny tiny interactions that happen between these two different components of the atmosphere. That's the biggest source of uncertainties in a climate model. So understanding how aerosols form clouds and how clouds interact with the aerosols and the way that PACE is going to be seeing it is going to allow us to

understand better that interaction, put it in our models, be able to predict the impacts of the climate in a future in a better way. And the irony of some aerosols is that they actually may help mitigate the greenhouse gas effect, right? Exactly. I mean, aerosols balance the light. So there's so much unknown about the aerosols and having this continuous hyper-pectro polarizing view of the earth is going to be crucial to bring the majority of these questions that we have about what aerosols are doing with claws are doing, give us this answers that we really need. I know you were talking about the species of plankton that sequesters carbon and produces oxygen. They kind of sound like the trees of the seas.

There have been ideas I remember over the years being put forward about feeding the plankton in the ocean so they could soak up more of the CO2. And if I recall, it was an idea of spreading iron in the ocean to stimulate growth. What's happened with that? So I think the original idea of dumping iron in the ocean to support phytoplankton growth started like, you know, long time, like 20, 30 years to go in oceanographic circles. And it is true that certain part of the ocean are limited by the iron. So if you dump iron, the phytoplankton is going to start growing and responding. And you can actually see that from space.

We do have images. Now currently, as we're looking to the, as we as a community, are looking for the solutions for the changing climate. there's lots of ideas they're being boiled under this idea of marine carbon dioxide removal where those experiments would be repeated. And PACE will definitely be supporting the exploration of these things. So like, you know, we are kind of in a stage that we don't understand completely the oceanic, the way the ocean ecosystems work. So I think in future years there's going to be lots of funding going towards understanding

better the response to the ocean, those iron supplements. in order to actually go further down the line in future and actually doing that or not. We really don't understand it. And, you know, that's where, like, us observing the impact of those experiments are important. And that's where base can come in, definitely, to see what's going to happen. Because you don't want unintended consequences. Exactly. Exactly.

It's like, you know, we have so many examples from the history of humankind where we play with the nature. And nature responds in a very specific way. And if you don't understand the ecosystem, well, you really cannot think over it. So, you know, like different types of phytoplankton will success really, really good in exported carbon. Some other type of phytoplankton will be really bad in exporting carbon. And dumping iron and not understanding what kind of phytoplankton is going to grow would be kind of silly. So, you know, there's lots of, I think, currently investments being happening to kind of understand the ecosystem response better before actually moving onward with like true climate, you know, corrections and things like that. Yeah. That's always a good idea.

Yes. get some data. Let's start small and then maybe, you know. Well, let's talk about what are some of the measurable things, public outcomes that could come from pace. So, I mean, as you said to yourself, I mean, like plankton is near to my heart. So let's start there. So we would be able, we were able to see green from space. And by seeing green, don't know anything. There's certain type of phyto plankton, as I said, they're really good in exporting carbon. Some of them are bad and just understanding that difference, the fact that we can see that from Pace is really important because now we can put that in a climate model. On the other side, if you like going to the beach and there's like,

you know, a harmful algal bloom brewing, if you're like a person that has to close the beach or it has oysters or it has, you know, anything that's dependent on that water, the coastal ocean, you really want to know what's brewing and Pace is going to be able to see that. Water quality, Great Lakes, fisheries. Fish will eat specific things in the ocean and understanding what is the abundance of those specific things. It's very important for, for example, NOAA, to be able to predict the fisheries yields in years to come. So those are the results on the side of ocean, but similar things come from the atmosphere.

Again, once again, diversity of the aerosols, where are they coming, how are they forming, how they're interacting with clouds, super crucial not only for climate, but also for understanding of the air quality and human health. NASA, I understand, put out a video that you're featured in. Explaining the Pace mission. And they also made a 90s-themed toy commercial. Yes. Explaining different species of plankton.

Now we have a little clip from that. Let's hear that. The Fido fighters are out to do battle on the seas. But Proto-Parodinium lights up the battle with its bioluminescence. Go, Ameliana. Only the Fido fighters will decide the true fate of the seas. Oh, that is cute. That is cute.

We have amazing producers. I'm just going to say that. That's Ryan and his amazing brain. Do you have a favorite species of plankton? I know you love plankton so much. Yes, I do. It's not a really popular species, but it's a really pretty, pretty type of phytoplankton.

It's like silicoflagellate that means it has like a shell, like a bones made out of the glass. And it has a beautiful shape that really reminds me of the star on Pace's logo. That's my favorite type of phyto plankton. Okay, so you've got this satellite up. We've got lots of great hardware on it. Now, if I could give you a blank check on what you would really like, what would you spend it on? What do you need to know?

What would you like to know about the aerosols and the plankton that you don't? And what kind of hardware or how would you spend that money? Oh, so like I can build a new mission? Yeah. Yeah. Tell me what you'd like. Oh, wow. So, yeah.

Well, now I wouldn't give me all this money for sure. Yeah. There's something called lighter, which is a type of laser. And what that lighter allows us is to see deeper in the ocean. One thing that didn't say about pace, it's we see only the surface of the ocean. And that's where to extend plankton is sitting on. It's like sunlight, it's sitting really close to the surface of the ocean. But we don't see past that surface.

LiDAR can see deep into the ocean, not super deep, but deeper. So I'm really interested in the role that phytoplankton plays in the flow of carbon. But I'm also interested, where does that carbon go? Which pathway does it take in the ocean? And with lighter, I will be able to see that. So I will take your check. Okay. I'm going to make a mission.

I'm going to have a lighter with a couple of different colors, and I'm going to fly it globally, and that's going to give me the answer to the next step of my science exploration. Thank you. The check is in the mail, but I wouldn't wait too long for it. Okay. Thank you for telling us about your mission and your dreams, Dr. Sotchnik. You're welcome. Thank you for, you know, showing enthusiasm about something.

thing that I really, really love, which is, you know, face mission, the coolest mission ever. Dr. Yvonnez Sotinich, is senior research scientist at NASA. And that's it for today. Lots of folks help make the show happen, including Kathleen Davis, Diana Plasker, Beth Rami, Danielle Johnson. And many more. Next time, how the U.S. Botanic Garden rescues illegally trafficked plants. But for now, I'm CyFri producer Dee Petersmith.

See you then.