[✔️] February 24, 2022 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[👀 Richard Pauli]

/*February  24, 2022*/

/[  United Nations report  ] /
*Climate Scientists Warn of a ‘Global Wildfire Crisis’*
Worsening heat and dryness could lead to a 50 percent rise in 
off-the-charts fires, according to a United Nations report.
23 February 2022
Wildfires are becoming more intense and more frequent, ravaging 
communities and ecosystems in their path. Recent years have seen 
record-breaking wildfire seasons across the world from Australia to the 
Arctic to North and South America. With global temperatures on the rise, 
the need to reduce wildfire risk is more critical than ever.

A new report, *Spreading like Wildfire: The Rising Threat of 
Extraordinary Landscape Fires,* by UNEP and GRID-Arendal, finds that 
climate change and land-use change are making wildfires worse and 
anticipates a global increase of extreme fires even in areas previously 
unaffected. Uncontrollable and extreme wildfires can be devastating to 
people, biodiversity and ecosystems. They also exacerbate climate 
change, contributing significant greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.

UNEP is issuing an urgent call to governments to rethink their approach 
to extreme wildfires. By calling for a new ‘Fire Ready Formula’ and 
recognizing the important role of ecosystem restoration, we can minimize 
the risk of extreme wildfires by being better prepared and building back 
better in their aftermath.
https://www.unep.org/resources/report/spreading-wildfire-rising-threat-extraordinary-landscape-fires

- -

/[ download the full report 126 pages  ]/
*Spreading like Wildfire: The Rising Threat of Extraordinary Landscape 
Fires*
23 February 2022
https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/38372/wildfire_RRA.pdf
https://www.unep.org/resources/report/spreading-wildfire-rising-threat-extraordinary-landscape-fires



/[ NYTimes --  it needs only fuel, heat and drought... and a spark ] /
*Climate Scientists Warn of a ‘Global Wildfire Crisis’*
Worsening heat and dryness could lead to a 50 percent rise in 
off-the-charts fires, according to a United Nations report.
- -
The report, produced by more than 50 researchers from six continents, 
estimated that the risk worldwide of highly devastating fires could 
increase by up to 57 percent by the end of the century, primarily 
because of climate change. The risks will not be distributed equally: 
Some regions are likely to see more fire activity, while others may 
experience less.

It is a stark warning about the increased heat and dryness that 
human-caused global warming is bringing about. Nations and localities 
need to prepare better for the dangers, the report’s authors said...
- -
In some regions with long histories of brush fires, such as eastern 
Australia and the western United States and Canada, they have become 
more intense over the last decade and are ravaging larger areas, the 
report found. But uncontrolled burning is also starting to occur in 
places where it had not been common before, such as Russia, northern 
India and Tibet. In parts of the savannas of sub-Saharan Africa, by 
contrast, fire activity has declined over the past two decades, partly 
because drought has killed off more grass...
- -
The increase in burning is projected to be especially large in places 
including the Arctic, said Douglas I. Kelley, a researcher at the U.K. 
Center for Ecology & Hydrology who conducted the data analysis for the 
report. The northern reaches of Russia and North America are already 
warming much more quickly than the rest of the globe. The intense Arctic 
fires of 2020 released more polluting gases into the atmosphere that 
June than in any other month in 18 years of data collection...
- -
The prolonged drought in the American West — the region’s worst, 
scientists say, in at least 1,200 years — has been helping to spark 
wildfires earlier in the year. Forecasters are expecting the warmth and 
dryness to continue into this spring and beyond...
- -
Dr. Humphrey said more governments needed to discover, or rediscover, 
what fire actually is: “something really critical for our planet, but 
that also needs to be managed.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/climate/climate-change-un-wildfire-report.html#commentsContainer
- -
/[ United Nations Report Frontiers 2022: Noise, Blazes and Mismatches 
Chapter 2 ]/
*The chapter titled Wildfires Under Climate Change: A Burning Issue* 
discusses the role of climate change and human influence in the changing 
wildfire regimes around the world, the impacts of wildfires on the 
environment and human health, and the measures that can help to prevent, 
respond and build resilience to wildfires.
Deadly wildfires, noise pollution, and disruptive timing of life cycles: 
UN report identifies looming environmental threats Wildfires are burning 
more severely and more often, urban noise pollution is growing into a 
global public health menace, and phenological mismatches
download the full report
https://www.unep.org/resources/frontiers-2022-noise-blazes-and-mismatches



/[  study says  ]/
*Global warming is amplifying our water cycle—and it's happening much 
faster than we expected*
by University of New South Wales
FEBRUARY 23, 2022
The global water cycle—that is, the constant movement of freshwater 
between the clouds, land and the ocean—plays an important role in our 
daily lives. This delicate system transports water from the ocean to the 
land, helping to make our environment habitable and soil fertile.

But rising global temperatures have been making this system more 
extreme: water is moving away from dry regions towards wet regions, 
causing droughts to worsen in parts of the globe, while intensifying 
rainfall events and flooding in others. In other words, wet areas are 
getting wetter, and dry areas are getting drier.

Up until now, changes to the cycle have been difficult to directly 
observe, with around 80 percent of global rainfall and evaporation 
happening over the ocean.

But a new UNSW-led study, published today in Nature, has used changing 
patterns of salt in the ocean to estimate how much ocean freshwater has 
moved from the equator to the poles since 1970. The findings show that 
between two and four times more freshwater has moved than climate models 
anticipated—giving us insights about how the global water cycle is 
amplifying as a whole.

"We already knew from previous work that the global water cycle was 
intensifying," says lead author of the study Dr. Taimoor Sohail, a 
mathematician and postdoctoral research associate at UNSW Science. "We 
just didn't know by how much.

"The movement of freshwater from warm to cold areas forms the lion's 
share of water transport. Our findings paint a picture of the larger 
changes happening in the global water cycle."

The team reached their findings by analyzing observations from three 
historical data sets covering the period 1970-2014.

But instead of focusing on direct rainfall observations—which can be 
hard to measure across the ocean—they focused on a more unusual aspect: 
how salty the water was in each ocean area.

"In warmer regions, evaporation removes fresh water from the ocean 
leaving salt behind, making the ocean saltier," says co-author Jan Zika, 
an associate professor in the UNSW School of Mathematics and Statistics.

"The water cycle takes that fresh water to colder regions where it falls 
as rain, diluting the ocean and making it less salty."

In other words, the water cycle leaves a signature on the ocean salt 
pattern—and by measuring these patterns, researchers can trace how the 
cycle changes over time.

The team estimate that between 1970 and 2014, an extra 46,000-77,000 
cubic kilometers of freshwater was transported from the equator to the 
poles than expected—that's around 18-30 centimeters of freshwater from 
tropical and sub-tropical regions, or roughly 123 times the water in 
Sydney Harbour.

"Changes to the water cycle can have a critical impact on 
infrastructure, agriculture, and biodiversity," says Dr. Sohail. "It's 
therefore important to understand the way the climate change is 
impacting the water cycle now and into the future.

"This finding gives us an idea of how much this limb of the water cycle 
is changing, and can help us improve future climate change models."

Improving future projections
When Dr. Sohail and the team compared their findings to 20 different 
climate models, they found that all the models had underestimated the 
actual change in warm-cold freshwater transfer.

Dr. Sohail says the findings could mean we're underestimating the 
impacts of climate change on rainfall.

"Findings like ours are how we improve these models," says Dr. Sohail.

"Each new generation of modeling adapts past models with real data, 
finding areas that we can improve upon in future models. This is a 
natural evolution in climate modeling."

Scientists are now using the sixth generation of climate modeling 
(called the Sixth Climate Model Intercomparison Project, or 'CMIP6'), 
which incorporated updates from the fifth generation.

This newest finding is a demonstration of the scientific process at 
work—and could help improve future estimates.

"Establishing the change in warm-to-cold freshwater transport means we 
can move forward and continue to make these important projections about 
how climate change is likely to impact our global water cycle," says Dr. 
Sohail.

"In 10 or 20 years from now, scientists can use this reference to find 
out how much these patterns are further changing over time."
https://phys.org/news/2022-02-global-amplifying-cycleand-faster.html



/[  to save the planet with a computer game  ]/
*From ‘Dune’ to climate change, UChicago scholar draws from unique 
experiences in new course*
Postdoctoral researcher blends art and science in interdisciplinary 
College course on gaming history
February 22, 2022
By Lily Levine - Class of 2022, Writer, College Editorial Team
University of Chicago undergraduate students will soon have a new 
opportunity to delve into the wondrous world of video games, guided by a 
game designer who consulted on one of the biggest films of the past year.

This spring, postdoctoral researcher Katherine Buse will help bring a 
creative blend of science and technology to the College curriculum. An 
expert on digital media, science fiction and environmental humanities, 
Buse’s scholarship draws from a range of theory and practice—including 
her recent work on “Dune,” the Oscar-nominated adaptation of the 
acclaimed novel.
Entitled “Gaming History,” the new course will explore how video games 
reflect, theorize and alter our understanding of the past. For example, 
how have popular titles, such as “Call of Duty,” functioned in the 
pedagogy of public history? Working with co-instructor Bradley Bolman, 
PhD’21—a historian of science and postdoctoral researcher at 
UChicago—Buse has designed the course to include visits from a few guest 
speakers. The two have also reserved one day per week for live play, 
during which students can try out various games, taking into account how 
they represent the structure of time, causality and choice.

Students will engage in original archival, ethnographic and media 
archeological research to critically analyze media objects, as well as 
designing some of their own. The unique seminar draws on both 
practice-based research and traditional humanistic research, reflecting 
UChicago’s commitment to understanding topics through an 
interdisciplinary approach.

“Projects that ask me to apply my humanistic knowledge–from game design 
to consulting on science fiction–always help me see my studies in a new 
light and clarify what is most important to me as a scholar. Ideally I 
can help students make better choices as creators, workers and 
citizens,” Buse said. “UChicago has some amazing new programs that take 
its interdisciplinarity to a new level by blending research and practice 
in this way. The Media Arts and Design (MAAD) and Inquiry and Research 
in the Humanities(IRHUM) programs are two of the most exciting, and I am 
delighted that this course is cross-listed in both.”

*An intellectual journey*
As a young girl reading science fiction novels, Buse’s interest in 
climate science skyrocketed as real-world current events began 
paralleling the stories she enjoyed.

Her intellectual journey took off in her time as an undergraduate 
student at Duke University. After reading seminal texts like Octavia 
Butler’s “Dawn” and Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Science in the Capital” 
trilogy, she continued to connect the dots between the foreboding books 
she consumed and the reality of climate change.

“I eventually realized that climate scientists were already using and 
referring to science fiction in these interesting ways,” said Buse, a 
postdoc at UChicago’s Institute on the Formation of Knowledge. “You 
would think that climate scientists wouldn't talk about science fiction, 
because they would be afraid of seeming like they're not doing real 
work. And so, I thought, ‘This is kind of paradoxical to me, I want to 
understand more.’”  ...
After college, she went on to earn master’s degrees at the University of 
Liverpool and the University of Cambridge, and her P.h.D at the 
University of California, Davis. She still collaborates with the UC 
Davis ModLab as a game and graphics designer.

Throughout her academic career, Buse has noticed the immense pressure 
placed on climate scientists in conversations about climate change. That 
disproportionate burden, she said, stems from how policymakers often 
treat science as sets of recommendations, predictions and plans.

In her opinion, studying science and culture together—instead of in 
isolation—can yield better habits of thinking and encourage experts in 
other fields to work in partnership with scientists.

Since 2017, for example, Buse has worked on a game called “Foldit,” 
originally created nearly a decade earlier by University of Washington 
researchers. The game immerses players in puzzles to decipher 
three-dimensional structures of proteins. Buse and her ModLab team 
utilized comic-like graphics to create a science fiction narrative 
featuring characters of diverse backgrounds to represent how knowledge 
is collectively produced. The beta version of their narrative, “Foldit: 
First Contact,” is set to be released later this year.
Their goal was to make science and culture relatable and accessible, and 
to reinforce how arts and science are necessary to solve big problems—a 
key learning objective for all students in Buse’s course this spring.
“Video games meet climate change: Dr. Buse’s research not only brings 
together the far reaches of human experience, but it also recognizes 
that new fields may emerge out of what have not yet been thought of as 
fields,” said Shadi Bartsch Zimmer, director at the Institute on the 
Formation of Knowledge...
- -
*Answering ‘impossible’ questions*
Buse’s PhD dissertation includes an entire chapter about “Dune,” Frank 
Herbert’s 1965 classic science-fiction novel, as an example of the kind 
of planetary world building that science fiction shares with climate 
science. As she was writing that chapter, a mutual colleague connected 
her with screenwriter Eric Roth, who had just begun adapting the novel 
to a screenplay. Roth was impressed by Buse’s work, and invited her to 
assist with the research for the feature film that was released in 2021.

In their early conversations, the two discussed how best to portray the 
book’s various social issues—including water scarcity on the fictional 
desert planet of Arrakis, gender and race, and the intersection of 
capitalism and environmental crises. Buse also worked with Roth during 
the drafting process to help ensure that portrayals of such conflicts 
were authentic to their real-world inspirations.
One obstacle she said she encountered while helping recreate Herbert’s 
world was the fact that the author had not created a “closed system” in 
his original books, which have been famously difficult to adapt for the 
screen. While today’s science-fiction paradigm is based on meticulous 
and comprehensive world-building, Herbert had instead wanted a “loose 
ball of yarn with strands trailing out,” Buse said. Having extensively 
researched Dune while writing her dissertation chapter about it and read 
it multiple times since grad school, her expertise made her the perfect 
candidate to conquer the challenge.

“I would get asked these questions [from Eric] that were basically 
impossible to answer because Herbert deliberately left them ambiguous, 
like ‘What does the sandworm eat?’ And I guess the reason that Eric 
would ask me questions like that is because he knew that I had read it 
so many times that I wouldn’t forget the two sentences on page 200 where 
a tiny clue to sandworm diets gets mentioned.”

For Buse, one of the most rewarding moments of watching the final film 
was knowing how much work had gone into making the movie behind the 
camera. From costuming to CGI to set design, she said she came away with 
a newfound appreciation for filmmaking.

Outside of her work on games and movies, Buse can be found writing her 
book project, “Speculative Planetology: Science, Culture, and the 
Building of the Model Worlds,” which calls for increased practices of 
participatory world building between scientists, fiction writers, 
engineers and policymakers. By thinking both within and beyond a 
monolithic planetary future, she argues that science fiction creators 
will broaden the range of tools, narratives and perspectives that humans 
hold in their current scientific endeavors.

“Speculative planetology is something that’s been co-built by science 
and culture,” she said. “I hope that means the humanities will move in a 
direction of not just receiving and responding to bad news from science, 
but becoming more productive and proactive in thinking about the 
relationship between science and culture.”

https://college.uchicago.edu/news/academic-stories/dune-climate-change-uchicago-scholar-draws-unique-experiences-new-course

- -

/[Registration for spring quarter classes opened on Feb. 21. Learn more 
about the “Gaming History” course on the IFK website]/
*Gaming History*
Course Level: Undergraduate
Department: Media, Art, and Design, IRHUM
Year: 2021-22
Term: Spring
Brad Bolman and Katherine Buse

    How do games reflect, theorize, and alter history? This
    interdisciplinary research seminar will explore the history, design,
    and function of games, drawing on strategies from history, media and
    game studies, and cultural anthropology in order to understand the
    place of games in the history of knowledge and our knowledge of
    history. How have historical simulations, such as Civilization,
    represented scientific, social, and cultural progress? How do games,
    such as Settlers of Catan, invite players to perform and inhabit
    historically specific subjectivities? What is the role of popular
    titles, such as Call of Duty: Cold War, in the pedagogy of public
    history? By representing alternate and future histories, games
    articulate theories of historical change. They even change the
    future by suggesting and popularizing modes of political, economic,
    and social agency. In this course, we will play games about history,
    including video games, tabletop games, and other analog game
    formats, to consider how they represent the structure of time,
    causality, and choice. Through class discussions, example games, and
    theoretical readings, we will learn about methods, theories, and
    case studies for gaming history and historicizing games. Students
    will practice original archival, ethnographic, and media
    archaeological research into the history of games, and gain
    experience writing about and critically analyzing media objects. The
    seminar will emphasize practice-based research alongside traditional
    humanistic research, including critical game play and game design.
    The course will culminate in a solo or collaborative game design
    project that intervenes in gaming culture and its histories.

https://ifk.uchicago.edu/courses/results/search/eyJyZXN1bHRfcGFnZSI6ImNvdXJzZXNcL3Jlc3VsdHNcL3NlYXJjaCIsImtleXdvcmRzIjoiZ2FtaW5nIGhpc3RvcnkifQ/



/[  Counter intuitive at first,  makes sense... ] /
*Study finds big wildfires temporarily boost water supplies and flood risks*
Brandon Loomis - 2-22-2022
Arizona Republic
Major forest fires around the West temporarily boost both surface water 
supplies and the risks of flood and debris flows, researchers found in a 
study released this week.

In dozens of watersheds that have burned since 1984, including several 
on or around Arizona’s Mogollon Rim, fires that scorched at least 20% of 
an area increased streamflow by an average of 30%, according to the 
study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The effect lasts for about six years, after which encroaching vegetation 
and recovery of soils reduces flows again, even though the forests may 
take years more to fully recover.

The study, titled "Growing impact of wildfire on Western U.S. water 
supply," does not indicate that the era of climate change-induced 
megafires could be good for the West’s long-term supplies, the authors 
warn. In fact, streamflow in most of the studied basins has declined 
since 1971. Rather, they conclude, the fires are “unhinging” streamflow 
from historically predictable responses to the climate.
- -
The 30% average increase held true in forests across the region, 
Williams said, including in Arizona.
Not surprisingly, the researchers found, the volume of water coursing 
into streams from burned areas increased in spring, when trees and 
plants would otherwise begin using some of it. More surprisingly, 
though, the trend held in fall, when natural water demand wanes.

This suggests that fire’s growing imprint on the Western forests will 
complicate the job for dam managers, who alter flows from reservoirs 
seasonally to alternately maximize storage and make room to absorb 
floodwaters.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environment/2022/02/22/study-finds-growing-links-wildfires-and-water-west/6887269001/


/[  Soot arrives with tourists  ]/
*Soot is accelerating snow melt in popular parts of Antarctica, a study 
finds*
https://www.npr.org/2022/02/22/1082118865/soot-is-accelerating-snow-melt-in-popular-parts-of-antarctica-study-finds 


- -

/[ See the data ]/
* IAATO. Data & Statistics*
IAATO has been carefully monitoring, analyzing and reporting Antarctic 
tourism trends since 1991 as part of its commitment to the effective 
self-management of guest activities in the region.
LOOKING FOR TOURISM STATISTICS?
If you’d like to access IAATO’s tourism statistics, simply let us know a 
little more information about yourself and how you plan to use the data 
in our request form,
https://iaato.org/information-resources/data-statistics/



/[The news archive - looking back]/
*On this day in the history of global warming February 24, 2002*
February 24, 2002:

In the Denver Post, Bruce Smart of Republicans for Environmental 
Protection rips President George W. Bush's February 14, 2002 speech on 
climate change:

    "...President Bush reaffirmed the nation's commitment to the U.N.
    Framework Convention's 1992 goal 'to stabilize greenhouse gas
    concentrations at a level that will prevent dangerous human
    interference with the climate,' and he outlined an environmental
    path for the nation to follow. A number of the specifics he
    proposed, if forcefully pursued, can be helpful.

    "But the medicine prescribed for the world's greatest environmental
    threat—the malignant growth of atmospheric concentrations of
    greenhouse gases—is only a well-packaged placebo. It is no cure for
    global warming and the hazardous changes in climate that a great
    majority of scientists believe it is likely to cause."

http://web.archive.org/web/20030122161530/http://www.rep.org/opinions/op-eds/19.htm


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