The Arctic sea, coral reefs and forest fires have all been recently affected by climate change.
The lowest amount of ice for the year, as determined by satellite data, was present in the Arctic on September 18. This year, the ice cover has shrunk to a size of 1.80 million square miles, about 598,000 square miles less than the minimum average for the period between 1981 and 2010..
Walt Meier, sea ice researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said this year “marks a continuation of the dramatic decline in sea ice cover since the 1980s. chance or random variation. In response to rising temperatures, this means a fundamental change in ice cover.
Meanwhile, the coral reefs of the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico are home to hundreds of species of fish, more than 10% of the world’s reefs, and more than $6 billion in economic benefits from fishing, tourism, and fishing. other ecosystem services.
According to the National Ocean Service, over the past 40 years, local stressors including overfishing, pollution and alien species have had a significant negative impact. Less than 10% of the surface of the majority of the reefs in the region are generally covered with living corals.
One of the main causes of this deterioration is heat stress. This can lead to a phenomenon known as coral bleaching, as corals eject the vibrant algae that make up the majority of their diet.
Prolonged warm weather or consecutive bleaching events will eventually lead to the death of many corals. At least six major bleaching events have affected the Florida Keys since 1987, with some of these events affecting the entire region.
Smoke from wildfires has recently kicked up enough soot in western regions to undo much of the air quality improvements made over the past two decades, exposing millions of Americans each year to deadly levels of small particles.
These are some of the findings of a recent Stanford University study of pollution by particles known as PM2.5, which can enter our bloodstream and lodge deep in our lungs, a finding published in Environmental Science & Technology.
Researchers calculated PM2.5 concentrations specifically from wildfire smoke using statistical modeling and artificial intelligence methods deep enough to highlight fluctuations
in specific counties and specific smoke occurrences from coast to coast from 2006 to 2020.
