January 16, 2024: This week's blast of Arctic air, thoughts on our exploration of seas and space, and Earth's hottest year on record. —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | | After months of record-breaking warm weather, much of the U.S. is experiencing a harsh blast of frigid air from the Arctic this week, writes Scientific American senior news reporter Meghan Bartels. Disruption of the high-altitude swirl of winds called the polar vortex has unleashed this very cold air. A second, less severe Arctic blast is forecast for later this month, and the phenomenon could repeat into February, says climate scientist Judah Cohen.
Why so cold: Climate change likely plays a role in disruptions to the polar vortex. Cohen says that melting sea ice near Scandinavia coupled with high snowfall near Siberia set up a thermal contrast this winter, driving the polar jet stream into waves that dip south in latitude. The polar vortex typically "wakes up," around January, he adds.
What the experts say: "It seems very counterintuitive and surprising that a warmer planet can actually increase your odds of experiencing severe winter weather events—but that's what our research has shown," Cohen says.
| | | Credit: Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images | | | The pace of Congress hobbles many of NASA's mission goals, releasing funds annually rather than on the multi-year scale that space missions often require, writes astronomer and science communicator Phil Plait. For example, Mars rocks recently collected by the Perseverance rover rest safely inside sealed cylinders on the planet, but Congress has yet to fund a mission to pick up the rocks and bring them to Earth for study. Such a Mars sample return mission is a vital part of NASA's plans, with implications for the search for ancient or extant life on Mars.
The problem: NASA's finances are hugely exaggerated in public perception. In 2018, the average American thought NASA received more than 6 percent of federal spending, when in reality it gets only 0.5 percent, according to a poll by Insider.
A solution: The Fiscal Bipartisan Act of 2023 has resulted in a cap on NASA's budget until 2025. Provided that NASA can weather this setback, Plait's "radical thought" is to increase NASA funding by, say, 20 percent to $30 billion a year, thereby easing a vast amount of pressure on the agency and enabling progress on a Mars sample return mission. The cost of finding answers to some of humanity's oldest and most fundamental philosophical questions, Plait writes, "is relatively trifling." | | | A pair of wandering albatrosses. Credit: Getty Images/Imazins | | | Albatross navigation The wandering albatross, the world's largest seabird, knows where to fly by relying on a constant hum of microbaroms, a type of very low-frequency "infrasound," below the human threshold for hearing, new findings suggest. This microbarom infrasound, created by colliding ocean waves, is called "the voice of the sea." It is present everywhere, all the time, a seabird ecologist tells science writer Joe Polidoro. | | | • A huge cache of ancient DNA reveals the origins of multiple sclerosis and other traits in modern Europeans. | 4 min read | | | • Space and submarine explorers are right to take risks, writes Rick N. Tumlinson, co-founder of the SpaceFund, a venture capital firm, and of the Space Frontier Foundation. His essay outlines the relative risks of voyages to space and the depths of Earth's seas, as well as the accompanying regulations and personal risk assessments. In practical terms, no space launch operator in the U.S. would be allowed to do what the operators of the Titan submersible did last summer, killing five people. That disaster was a true tragedy, Tumlinson writes. Before it, not a single person had died in a commercial submarine. "We can be assured that the submersible industry will now change to ensure that it has rules to protect against it ever happening again as a result of the same mistakes," he concludes. "We can also be assured that people will continue to explore the ocean depths." | 7 min read | | | Surface temperatures last year on Earth were 0.15 degree Celsius (0.27 degree Fahrenheit) hotter than the previous record holder, 2016, per the news story above. That rise might not sound like much, especially if one doesn't comprehend the physics required to drive such an increase, says my spouse Steve Mirsky, a Scientific American contributing editor. Using information from the site 4hiroshimas.info, Steve calculated a more relatable unit of measurement for the energy driving the seemingly trivial (to some) temperature gain. Scientists estimate that our climate has accumulated 4 Hiroshima atomic bombs' worth of heat every second since the start of 1998, the site states. Assuming a steady rate of energy input (which is a handy simplification), the aforementioned 2023 temperature increase represents some 126 million Hiroshima bombs, largely a result of human activity such as coal-fired power plants. Not trivial at all. | —Robin Lloyd, Contributing Editor | | Subscribe to this and all of our newsletters . | | | | Scientific American
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