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Misunderstandings and disinformation abounded at a 16 September hearing of the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency about geoengineering, which encompasses efforts to alter Earth systems for the purpose of mitigating climate change. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), chairwoman of the subcommittee, called for an outright ban on geoengineering and used the hearing to promote her Clear Skies Act, which would impose fines of up to $100,000 and potentially jail time for anyone conducting “weather modification” activities.

Geoengineering is an amorphous term that can refer to a range of climate intervention activities, including cloud seeding to spur precipitation, management of solar radiation to cool Earth by reflecting sunlight, and carbon capture and sequestration efforts.

“Today’s advocates of geoengineering don’t just want to address droughts or improve conditions for agriculture” Greene said. “They want to control the Earth’s climate to address the fake climate change hoax and head off global warming. That, of course, requires massive interventions.”

In addition to asserting that climate change is a hoax, Greene implied that climate interventions could remove enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to harm plant life. In questioning, Rep. Brian Jack (R-GA) repeated a dubious claim that the release of dry ice into a hurricane in 1947 in an experiment called Project Cirrus caused the hurricane to turn toward Georgia. And Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) argued that former Vice President Al Gore’s misrepresentation regarding the melting of the north polar ice cap invalidates decades of climate science. 

One witness during the hearing was Christopher Martz, a policy analyst and meteorologist at the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, an environmental policy think tank that has cast doubts on climate science. Martz received an undergraduate degree in meteorology in May and runs a weather blog that questions the influence of climate change in extreme weather events. 

 
Related

•  Marjorie Taylor Green Introduces ‘Weather Modification’ Ban
•  Watch the hearing: Playing God with the Weather — A Disastrous Forecast
•  AGU’s Ethical Framework Principles for Climate Intervention Research
•  Get Involved: AGU Science Policy Action Center
 

Martz asserted that the science behind climate change is uncertain, and therefore that climate intervention is an alarmist reaction: “Warming could be mostly natural and we just don’t know,” he said. It’s not: The vast majority of scientists agree that Earth is warming and human activities are to blame.

The hearing’s only climate scientist witness, former Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist Michael MacCracken, tried to combat the climate denialism in the room. He challenged the ideas that current climate intervention efforts are sufficiently powerful or scalable enough to change a major weather phenomenon, or that they are targeted to harm the public.

Despite the falsehoods raised by Greene and others at the hearing, some of their comments aligned with how many scientists view climate intervention—as a potentially risky endeavor that requires more research before it is considered viable and safe.

AGU’s own Ethical Framework Principles for Climate Intervention Research, developed with the contributions of scientists, policymakers, ethicists, government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and potentially impacted communities, acknowledges this perspective: “Substantial research and evaluation efforts will be required to determine the effectiveness, risks, and opportunities of climate intervention,” the framework states.

At the hearing, Greene asked “who would control the dial” if scientists managed to reliably alter Earth’s climate.

Such questions are a reason to lean into Earth systems research, said Roger Pielke, Jr., a political scientist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who spoke at the hearing. Pielke called for Congress to enact legislation to improve oversight of geoengineering and recommended that Congress ask the National Academy of Sciences to assess what scientists do and don’t know about the effects of climate intervention activities.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), ranking member of the subcommittee, closed the hearing with a plea to support science. “Literally all we’re trying to accomplish by climate action is to keep our planet in some sort of balance,” she said, calling the Trump administration’s firing of federal scientists and engineers, the defunding of science agencies, the firing of the EPA science panel, and the deregulation of carbon emissions “dangerous.”

Stansbury and Greene agreed on one thing: “We have one Earth,” they each said.

—Grace van Deelen (@gvd.bsky.social), Staff Writer

These updates are made possible through information from the scientific community. Do you have a story about how changes in law or policy are affecting scientists or research? Send us a tip at eos@agu.org. Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

On 16 September, the world marks the international day for the preservation of the ozone layer—a day of action initiated by the United Nations. This year's theme is "from science to global action"—a reference to the fact that scientific findings have underpinned successful political action to protect the ozone layer for decades.

The Ordovician Period stands as a critical chapter in Earth's geological history, with carbon isotope records serving as both a key tool for stratigraphic correlation and a vital archive to unravel the coevolution of ancient climates and biospheres. For decades, however, prior research has largely focused on carbonate carbon isotope (δ13Ccarb) data, leaving organic carbon isotope (δ13Corg) records significantly understudied.

A new study led by the U.S. Forest Service, with Chapman University as a key senior collaborator, published in Nature Communications, suggests Earth's own tropical soils may contribute to climate change as global warming continues, releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂) as they warm and potentially accelerating a dangerous feedback loop.

The ground-shaking that an earthquake generates is only a fraction of the total energy that a quake releases. A quake can also generate a flash of heat, along with a domino-like fracturing of underground rocks. But exactly how much energy goes into each of these three processes is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to measure in the field.

How did humans become human? Understanding when, where and in what environmental conditions our early ancestors lived is central to solving the puzzle of human evolution.

After a tropical cyclone passes through an area, governments take stock of the damage. NOAA, for instance, lists the costs associated with damaged buildings and roads and reports any injuries or deaths attributed to the storm.

“This research supports the historically overlooked indirect health risk and burden of tropical cyclones.”

However, research suggests that storms can also have hidden, long-term consequences for human health. In a new study published in Science Advances, scientists report that cyclones, also known as hurricanes and typhoons, produce a significant uptick in hospitalizations due to cardiovascular disease for months after they subside. In addition, the potential populations at risk for such hospitalizations are growing as a result of climate change intensifying cyclones and driving them into temperate regions such as Canada and New Zealand.

“This research supports the historically overlooked indirect health risk and burden of tropical cyclones and suggests the need for extending public health interventions and disaster preparedness beyond the immediate cyclone aftermath,” said Wenzhong Huang, an environmental epidemiologist at Monash University in Australia and the lead author of the new study.

Heart Problems Spike After Storms

Previous studies have examined possible connections between cardiovascular disease and cyclones, but most have focused on a single health center and storm in the United States.

“For our study, we encompassed multiple tropical cyclone events across decades and across multiple countries and territories with diverse socioeconomic contexts,” Huang said. “We also analyzed much longer post cyclone periods.”

“I didn’t expect that the risk would persist that long.”

The researchers tracked cardiovascular disease–related hospitalizations of more than 6.5 million people across Canada, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam from 2000 to 2019. They identified 179 locations that experienced cyclones and documented how many days storms hit each area. The team then examined hospital records to see whether more people were admitted for heart problems after cyclones, tracking patients for up to a year after each storm.

The results revealed that hospitalizations associated with heart health jumped 13% for every additional day a location was hit by a cyclone. The biggest spike in hospitalizations didn’t occur immediately after the cyclones but, rather, came 2 months after they passed, and the increased risk of hospitalizations didn’t subside until 6 months later.

“I didn’t expect that the risk would persist that long,” Huang said.

The health burden also fell unevenly across populations. Men, people in their 20s through 50s, and those in disadvantaged communities had the highest risk. In fact, cardiovascular risks after cyclones fell during the study period in wealthier areas while rising in poorer areas. This result suggests that improved health care access and disaster preparedness have benefited only some populations, with Thailand and Vietnam seeing the most cyclone-related heart problems. In total, strokes and ischemic heart disease (in which blood vessels supplying the heart are narrowed) were the most common maladies reported.

“There is not a single disease that’s not touched upon by hurricanes.”

Naresh Kumar, an environmental health scientist at the University of Miami who studies the health effects of cyclones but was not involved in the new study, was not surprised by the findings. According to his own extensive research on hurricanes in Florida and Puerto Rico, “there is not a single disease that’s not touched upon by hurricanes,” Kumar said.

But he would have liked the authors of the new study to narrow down the mechanisms driving up cardiovascular health risk after cyclones. The possible causes are abundant. In the months following a cyclone, people increase their use of generators, which produce pollutants; eat more calorie-dense canned foods; can’t exercise or access prescription medicines as easily; and are under immense psychological stress—all of which can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Meanwhile, regular health care services are often disrupted, so preventative care is limited.

Understanding these mechanisms is critical because current disaster response systems vastly underestimate the health burden of tropical storms, researchers say. “We are still scratching the surface in terms of characterizing the health effects of hurricanes,” Kumar said.

Huang said untangling the most significant contributors to increased risk following a cyclone is the next phase of his research. “I want to understand and investigate the candidates underlying this risk pattern,” he said.

As part of this process, Huang also aims to identify the reasons behind the elevated risk in some populations, such as working-age men. The research could help public health officials target interventions to high-risk populations and monitor cardiovascular health in the months following cyclones.

The Worsening Exposure to Storms

Answering the question of why more people suffer from heart problems after cyclones is becoming increasingly important to policymakers as more communities come under threat. Warmer oceans are fueling more intense storms with higher wind speeds and longer durations, while rising sea levels worsen storm surge flooding that can prolong recovery.

Climate change is also pushing tropical cyclones poleward into regions that have historically experienced few severe storms, such as eastern Canada and New Zealand. “Places that historically experienced fewer cyclone events could have much higher risk,” Huang said, suggesting such regions may be inadequately equipped to respond to major storms. “We need to focus on these regions to better prepare for the growing risk.”

—Andrew Chapman (@andrewchapman.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Chapman, A. (2025), Cyclones affect heart health for months after they subside, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250342. Published on 16 September 2025. Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

It’s been nearly 2 centuries since a planet was discovered in the solar system. But now scientists think they’ve uncovered evidence of a newcomer that just might usurp that honor from Neptune. Following an analysis of the orbits of bodies in the Kuiper Belt, a team has proposed that an unseen planet at least 25 times more massive than Pluto might reside there. These results were published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The Kuiper Belt is loosely defined as a doughnut-shaped swath of space beginning just beyond the orbit of Neptune and extending to roughly 1,000 times the Earth-Sun distance. It’s home to untold numbers of icy, rocky objects, including Pluto and other so-called Kuiper Belt objects such as Arrokoth.

Everything in the Kuiper Belt can be thought of as cosmic debris, said Amir Siraj, an astrophysicist at Princeton University and lead author of the new paper. “It represents some of the leftovers from the formation of our solar system.”

And most of those leftovers are small: Pluto is the most massive known Kuiper Belt object, and it’s just 0.2% the mass of Earth.

But over the past decade, scientists have hypothesized that something substantially larger than Pluto might be lurking in the Kuiper Belt. Evidence of that unseen world—a so-called Planet Nine or Planet X—lies in the fact that six Kuiper Belt objects share curiously similar orbital parameters and are associated in physical space. A nearby, larger planet could have shepherded those worlds into alignment, researchers have proposed.

Planes, Planes, Everywhere

Siraj and his colleagues recently took a different tack to look for a massive resident of the Kuiper Belt: They analyzed a much larger sample of Kuiper Belt objects and focused on their orbital planes. One would naively expect the average orbital plane of Kuiper Belt objects to be the same as the average orbital plane of the planets in the solar system, said Siraj. But a planet-mass body in the Kuiper Belt would exert a strong enough gravitational tug on its neighboring Kuiper Belt objects to measurably alter the average orbital plane of the Kuiper Belt, at least in the vicinity of the planet. Siraj and his collaborators set out to see whether they could spot such a signal.

“Neptune has a really strong grasp on the outer solar system.”

The researchers extracted information about the orbits of more than 150 Kuiper Belt objects from the JPL Small-Body Database managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Of the several thousand known Kuiper Belt objects, the team honed in on that subset because those objects aren’t gravitationally influenced by Neptune. Neptune is the playground bully of the outer solar system, and the orbits of many Kuiper Belt objects are believed to be literally shoved around by gravitational interactions with the ice giant. “Neptune has a really strong grasp on the outer solar system,” said Siraj.

The team calculated the average orbital plane of their sample of Kuiper Belt objects. At distances of 50 to 80 times the Earth-Sun distance, they recovered a plane consistent with that of the inner solar system. But farther out, at distances between 80 and 200 times the Earth-Sun distance, the researchers found that their sample of Kuiper Belt objects formed a plane that was warped relative to that of the inner solar system. There was only a roughly 4% probability that that signal was spurious, they calculated.

Meet Planet Y

Siraj and his collaborators then modeled how planets of different masses at various orbital distances from the Sun would affect a simulated set of Kuiper Belt objects. “We tried all sorts of planets,” said Siraj.

By comparing those model results with the observational data, the researchers deduced that a planet 25–450 times more massive than Pluto with a semimajor axis in the range of 100–200 times the Earth-Sun distance was the most likely culprit. There’s a fair bit of uncertainty in those numbers, but the team’s results make sense, said Kat Volk, a planetary scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., not involved in the research. “They did a pretty good job of bracketing what kind of object could be causing this signal.”

To differentiate their putative planet from Planet X, Siraj and his colleagues suggested a new name: Planet Y. It’s important to note that these two worlds, if they even exist, aren’t one and the same, said Siraj. “Planet X refers to a distant, high-mass planet, while Planet Y denotes a closer-in, lower-mass planet.”

“This is really expected to be a game changer for research on the outer solar system.”

There’s hope that Planet Y will soon get its close-up. The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST)—a 10-year survey of the night sky that will be conducted by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile beginning as soon as this fall—will be supremely good at detecting Kuiper Belt objects, said Volk, who is a member of the LSST Solar System Science Collaboration. “We’re going to be increasing the number of known objects by something like a factor of 5–10.”

It’s entirely possible that Planet Y itself could be spotted, said Volk. But even if it isn’t, simply observing so many more Kuiper Belt objects will better reveal the average orbital plane of the Kuiper Belt. That will, in turn, shed light on whether it’s necessary to invoke Planet Y at all.

Even if his team’s hypothesis is proven wrong, Siraj says he’s looking forward to the start of the LSST and its firehose of astronomical data. “This is really expected to be a game changer for research on the outer solar system.”

—Katherine Kornei (@KatherineKornei), Science Writer

Citation: Kornei, K. (2025), A survey of the Kuiper Belt hints at an unseen planet, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250344. Published on 16 September 2025. Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

This is an authorized translation of an Eos article. Esta es una traducción al español autorizada de un artículo de Eos.

Gale Sinatra y su esposo huyeron de su casa en Altadena, California, el 7 de enero con poco más que sus maletas, llevándose solo uno de sus dos autos.

“Pensábamos que íbamos a estar fuera por esa noche”, dijo Sinatra. “Pensábamos que controlarían el incendio y que volveríamos a entrar”.

Cuando la pareja regresó, semanas después, fue para excavar entre los escombros de su antigua casa, quemada por el incendio de Eaton.

Aunque escaparon con vida, los riesgos para la salud no fueron la excepción para Sinatra, su esposo (quien prefirió no ser identificado para esta historia) y otros vecinos. Los incendios de Eaton y el cercano Palisades llenaron la cuenca de Los Ángeles con una neblina tóxica durante días, y las labores de limpieza amenazaron con levantar partículas carbonizadas mucho después de que los incendios se extinguieran.

Equipos de científicos de todo el país, junto con miembros de la comunidad, monitorearon la calidad del aire en las semanas posteriores al incendio, buscando aprender más sobre los riesgos asociados a la salud respiratoria e informar a la comunidad sobre cómo protegerse.

Incendios urbanos versus incendios forestales

Inhalar humo de cualquier incendio puede ser perjudicial. El humo contiene componentes peligrosos, como compuestos orgánicos volátiles (COV) emitidos por la quema de vegetación y productos tales como pintura y productos de limpieza; y material particulado, como polvo y hollín.

Aproximadamente el 90 % del material particulado (PM) presente en el humo de los incendios forestales son las PM2.5, o partículas de menos de 2.5 micrómetros de diámetro, lo suficientemente pequeñas como para penetrar en el torrente sanguíneo y en las zonas profundas de los pulmones.

Michael Kleeman utiliza estos instrumentos para monitorear la calidad del aire desde la parte trasera de un vehículo en Victory Park, Altadena, lo más al norte posible sin entrar en la zona de evacuación. Crédito: Michael Kleeman

Los incendios forestales urbanos presentan sus propios peligros, ya que no solo queman árboles y otra vegetación, sino también viviendas e infraestructura.

Cuando Sinatra regresó a su antiguo hogar, quedó impactada por todo lo que el fuego había quemado, desde sus joyas hasta su coche. “Se me hizo muy inquietante estar en la cocina y de repente decir: ¿Dónde está mi refrigerador?”, comentó. “¿Cómo derrites totalmente refrigerador?”

En enero de 2025, los incendios de Palisades y Eaton devastaron más de 150 kilómetros cuadrados en ciudades y zonas forestales del condado de Los Ángeles. A pesar de verse afectados personalmente, los científicos del área de Los Ángeles trabajaron diligentemente para comprender cómo los incendios en la interfaz entre lo urbano y lo forestal crean peligros únicos a través del aire, la tierra y el agua.

En el futuro, las condiciones cálidas y secas, agravadas por el cambio climático, seguirán aumentando el riesgo de incendios como estos. El trabajo de estos científicos puede proporcionar un modelo para la evaluación rápida de riesgos, la mitigación de riesgos para la salud y la planificación urbana en otras comunidades propensas a incendios”.

“Desde colchones hasta alfombras, pintura y aparatos electrónicos, todo se quema”, afirmó Roya Bahreini, científica ambiental de la Universidad de California, Riverside (UCR). Bahreini también es coinvestigadora principal de la Red de Medición de la Química y la Ciencia Atmosférica (ASCENT, por sus siglas en inglés), un proyecto de monitoreo de la calidad del aire a largo plazo liderado por el Instituto de Tecnología de Georgia, UCR, y la Universidad de California, Davis (UC Davis).

ASCENT, que se lanzó en 2021, cuenta con estaciones en todo el país, incluyendo tres en el sur de California. Durante los incendios de enero en Los Ángeles, que arrasaron no solo Altadena (una comunidad no incorporada del interior) sino también barrios costeros, estas estaciones detectaron niveles de plomo, cloro y bromo en órdenes de magnitud superiores a lo habitual.

Las casas antiguas a veces tienen pintura con plomo, techos de asbesto o terrazas y cercas de madera tratadas con conservantes que contienen arsénico. Las tuberías de PVC contienen cloro. Y los retardantes de llama a menudo contienen compuestos orgánicos bromados. En estas formas, estos materiales no necesariamente representan un alto riesgo para la salud humana. Sin embargo, al quemarse y liberarse al aire, pueden ser peligrosos.

Las columnas de humo del incendio de Palisades (izquierda) y del incendio de Eaton se observan desde el espacio el 9 de enero. Crédito: ESA, contiene datos modificados de Copernicus Sentinel, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Michael Kleeman, ingeniero civil y ambiental de la Universidad de California en Davis, explicó que la mortalidad a corto plazo asociada con eventos con altos niveles de PM2.5, como los incendios forestales, suele manifestarse en forma de un infarto cardíaco. Sin embargo, inhalar el humo de los incendios forestales urbanos o las partículas que se levantan del polvo y las cenizas durante las labores de remediación puede presentar riesgos que no son evidentes de inmediato. “No se trata de un infarto inmediato, al día siguiente o a los tres días de la exposición. Se trata de un riesgo de cáncer que aparece mucho más adelante”, señaló Kleeman. “[El riesgo a] la exposición a lago plazo puede tener un efecto insidioso”.

Mapas de calidad del aire

“[El riesgo a] la exposición a lago plazo puede tener un efecto insidioso”.

El sur de California no es ajeno a los incendios forestales (tampoco Sinatra, quien ha evacuado varias veces durante sus 15 años en Altadena). Las frecuentes sequías en la cuenca de Los Ángeles resultan en grandes extensiones de vegetación reseca. Los infames vientos de Santa Ana, que soplan en la cuenca desde el este y el noreste, pueden provocar que los incendios se descontrolen rápidamente, como ocurrió con los incendios de Palisades y Eaton.

Los mapas de calidad del aire en tiempo real, como los del Distrito de Gestión de la Calidad del Aire de la Costa Sur (AQMD, por sus siglas en inglés) y la EPA de EE. UU., se basan en diversas fuentes para proporcionar datos durante todo el año. Los datos más detallados provienen de sofisticados instrumentos instalados por las propias agencias; el AQMD de la Costa Sur alberga 32 estaciones permanentes de monitoreo del aire en los condados de Los Ángeles, Orange, Riverside y San Bernardino.

Datos menos detallados, pero más generalizados, sobre material particulado provienen de redes de herramientas de medición de la calidad del aire disponibles comercialmente, como los monitores PurpleAir y los sensores Clarity, instalados por residentes u organizaciones comunitarias.

El Distrito de Gestión de la Calidad del Aire cuenta con instalaciones permanentes para monitorear la calidad del aire, pero tras los incendios forestales de Los Ángeles de enero de 2025, implementó iniciativas complementarias, recopilando datos de calidad del aire en tiempo real desde camionetas móviles de monitoreo. Crédito: South Coast AQMD.

“Resulta que las zonas donde se produjeron los incendios contaban con [una] red muy densa de estos sensores de bajo costo”, afirmó Scott Epstein, gerente de planificación y normativa del South Coast AQMD. “Al combinar esto con nuestra red regulatoria, obtuvimos una excelente cobertura de la contaminación por partículas finas”.

Esta densidad permitió a los investigadores observar las columnas de humo de los incendios forestales de Eaton y Palisades a medida que se dirigían hacia la costa.

Una estación del AQMD en Compton, a unos 37 kilómetros (23 millas) al sur del incendio de Eaton, mostró niveles muy elevados de metales tóxicos, como arsénico y plomo, entre el 7 y el 11 de enero, mientras la columna pasaba sobre la zona. Estos niveles se normalizaron en pocos días. Los instrumentos ASCENT en Pico Rivera, a unos 23 kilómetros (14 millas) al sur del incendio de Eaton, registraron un aumento de 110 veces en los niveles de plomo entre el 8 y el 11 de enero.

Estaciones permanentes de medición de la calidad del aire como estas ofrecen una fuente de información pública que residentes como Sinatra pueden consultar para decidir cuándo quedarse en casa o regresar a una zona quemada. Sin embargo, cuando estallaron los incendios de Palisades y Eaton, investigadores del AQMD y otras instituciones se propusieron complementar estos esfuerzos con un monitoreo más detallado.

Movilizándose rápidamente Melissa Bumstead (izquierda) y Jeni Knack se ofrecieron como voluntarias para recolectar muestras de aire y cenizas tras los incendios de Eaton y Palisades. Crédito: Shelly Magier.

En enero, investigadores de la Universidad de Harvard; la Universidad de California, Los Ángeles (UCLA); la Universidad de Texas en Austin; la Universidad del Sur de California (USC); y UC Davis lanzaron el Estudio de Exposición Humana y Salud a Largo Plazo de Los Angeles Fire, o LA Fire HEALTH.

Mientras muchos residentes de Los Ángeles, incluyendo a Sinatra, seguían bajo órdenes de evacuación, los investigadores de LA Fire HEALTH se dirigían a zonas de evacuación.

Uno de estos investigadores fue Nicholas Spada, un científico especializado en aerosoles que viajó a Los Ángeles desde UC Davis el 14 de enero para instalar cuatro impactadores en cascada en Santa Mónica (cerca del incendio de Palisades), Pasadena (cerca del incendio de Eaton), Hollywood y West Hills. Estos instrumentos, del tamaño de un maletín, actúan como máquinas clasificadoras de monedas, explicó Spada: toman una muestra de aire y clasifican las partículas en ocho categorías de tamaño diferentes, desde 10 micrómetros (aproximadamente 1/9 del grosor promedio de un cabello humano) hasta 90 nanómetros (aproximadamente 1/1000 del grosor de un cabello humano). Los instrumentos recogieron ocho muestras cada dos horas hasta el 10 de febrero.

El instrumento “capta los cambios en las columnas de humo a medida que el incendio progresa de activo a latente y luego a extinto para después seguircon los efectos de mitigación”.

Un impactador en cascada permite a los científicos “asociar los perfiles de tamaño de las partículas con el tiempo”, explicó Spada. El instrumento “capta los cambios en las columnas de humo a medida que el incendio progresa de activo a latente y luego a extinto para después seguircon los efectos de mitigación”.

Las mediciones mostraron que no solo había elementos tóxicos como el plomo y el arsénico presentes en el aire durante todo el período de muestreo, sino que también una alta proporción de su masa (alrededor del 25 %) se encontraba en forma de partículas ultrafinas (del orden de nanómetros). Estas partículas no son filtradas por las mascarillas N95 y pueden penetrar profundamente en el cuerpo al inhalarse, explicó Spada.

Un equipo de investigadores de la Universidad de Texas llegó en una camioneta que también funcionaba como laboratorio móvil el 2 de febrero. Para entonces, los incendios ya estaban extinguidos, pero ya habían comenzado las labores de remediación que causaban la acumulación de polvo. Descubrieron que la calidad del aire exterior en las semanas posteriores a los incendios había recuperado los niveles previos y se ajustaba a las directrices de la EPA. Las muestras de interiores, especialmente las de viviendas dentro de las zonas quemadas, mostraron niveles más altos de COVs en comparación con las muestras de exteriores.

Los vecinos tienden una mano

Los miembros de la comunidad se sumaron a los esfuerzos para monitorear la calidad del aire.

Los miembros de la comunidad del sur de California también se sumaron a los esfuerzos para monitorear la calidad del aire. Melissa Bumstead y Jeni Knack, codirectoras del Laboratorio de Campo de Padres Contra Santa Susana, trabajaron con investigadores para crear y distribuir folletos sobre las medidas adecuadas para el equipo de protección personal, así como un protocolo de auto muestreo para los residentes que desearan recolectar muestras de ceniza de sus propiedades.

Por aproximadamente dos veces a la semana, del 14 de enero al 19 de febrero, recolectaron muestras de aire y ceniza en Pasadena, Altadena, Santa Mónica, Topanga y Pacific Palisades, y luego las enviaron a laboratorios, incluido el de Spada, para su análisis. El arsénico en todas las muestras de ceniza y el plomo en aproximadamente un tercio de ellas superaron los niveles de detección regionales de la EPA. Spada señaló en sus comunicaciones a los residentes que estos niveles de detección se basan en lo que es seguro para la ingestión de un niño y son relativamente conservadores.

“Esto ayudará a las personas en la próxima iteración de incendios a saber qué hacer”, recordó Bumstead haberles dicho a los residentes en las zonas de muestreo.

Después de las cenizas Sinatra perdió su casa en Altadena en el incendio de Eaton de enero de 2025. Al regresar para excavar entre los escombros, recorrió chimenea tras chimenea sin ninguna casa. Crédito: Gale Sinatra

El próximo incendio, dijo Sinatra, es algo que la abruma mientras ella y sus vecinos consideran la posibilidad de reconstruir.

Cuando la lluvia finalmente llegó al sur de California el 26 de enero, ayudó a extinguir los incendios y a controlar el polvo acumulado durante las labores de remediación, reduciendo así el riesgo de inhalación de toxinas.

Aun así, esas toxinas también estaban presentes en el suelo y el agua. Cuando Sinatra y su esposo regresaron al lugar calcinado de su casa, tomaron todas las precauciones que habían escuchado en las noticias, la EPA, los líderes comunitarios y los vecinos: usaron respiradores, trajes de protección, gafas protectoras y dos pares de guantes cada uno para protegerse.

La preocupación por las posibles consecuencias a largo plazo del aire que ya habían respirado, así como del suelo bajo sus pies, persiste mientras esperan más datos.

“Todos creen que existe una probabilidad significativa de un incendio en el futuro”, dijo Sinatra. “Nos preguntamos si sería seguro vivir allí, considerando la calidad del suelo y del aire, y si volverá a ocurrir.”

—Emily Dieckman (@emfurd.bsky.social), Escritora Asociada.

This translation by Daniela Navarro-Pérez was made possible by a partnership with Planeteando and GeoLatinas. Esta traducción fue posible gracias a una asociación con Planeteando and GeoLatinas.

Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors. Source: Water Resources Research

Deep learning’s (DL’s) promise and appeal is algorithmic amalgamation of all available data to achieve model generalization and prediction of complex systems. Thus, there is a need to design multivariate training and predictions tasks in order to identify all relevant connections between variables across different space and time scales.

Ouyang et al. [2025] propose a multi-task long-short-term memory (LSTM) neural network to predict time series of multiple hydrologic variables. In the application of the approach, by combining different variables in the prediction task and sharing information between them, improved physical consistency and accuracy is achieved. The authors demonstrate this in various prediction exercises of streamflow and evapotranspiration including conditions of data scarcity.

The study is a good example of how innovation within DL can realize the promise of generalizable hydrological models and predictions of complex systems in future. It also implicitly encourages hydrologists to expand their DL approaches for multi-tasking. After all, there is a plethora of data and computing resources available to achieve DL’s promise.

Citation: Ouyang, W., Gu, X., Ye, L., Liu, X., & Zhang, C. (2025). Exploring hydrological variable interconnections and enhancing predictions for data‐limited basins through multi‐task learning. Water Resources Research, 61, e2023WR036593. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023WR036593

—Stefan Kollet, Editor, Water Resources Research

Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Author(s): Ramesh Sasmal and Supratik Banerjee

Following a general heuristic approach, algebraic constraints are established between the parallel and perpendicular power-law exponents of nonaxisymmetric, highly aligned magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, both with and without a strong imbalance between the Elsässer variables. Such relations are univ…

[Phys. Rev. E 112, 035208] Published Tue Sep 16, 2025

Publication date: Available online 5 September 2025

Source: Advances in Space Research

Author(s): Lorenzo Niccolai, Marco Bassetto, Giovanni Mengali

Publication date: Available online 5 September 2025

Source: Advances in Space Research

Author(s): A.V. Glushkov, L.T. Ksenofontov, K.G. Lebedev, A.V. Saburov

Publication date: Available online 4 September 2025

Source: Advances in Space Research

Author(s): M. Abdullahi, R. Aloisio, S. Ashurov, U. Atalay, F.C.T. Barbato, R. Battiston, M.E. Bertaina, E. Bissaldi, D. Boncioli, L. Burmistrov, I. Cagnoli, E. Casilli, F. Cadoux, D. Cortis, A.L. Cummings, M. D’Arco, S. Davarpanah, I. De Mitri, G. De Robertis, A. Di Giovanni

Rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are known to raise temperatures in Earth's atmosphere. But slow feedback processes, including heat storage in the ocean and changes in the carbon cycle, mean that sometimes, such temperature changes don't manifest right away; it can take decades, or even millennia, for Earth to reach equilibrium.

A pioneering study led by researchers from the Interdisciplinary Center of Marine and Environmental Research (CIIMAR) and the Marine and Environmental Sciences Center (MARE) identifies seaweed forests on the northern coast of Portugal as strategic allies in carbon capture and storage.

Warm water flowing into fjords and beneath ice shelves will continue to be a prime cause of glacial melting as global temperatures rise. This melting will, in turn, contribute to sea level rise and increasing inundation of coastal areas.

Rising temperatures of the world's oceans threaten to accelerate the melting and splintering of glaciers—thereby potentially increasing the number of icebergs and, with it, the need to better understand more about their movement and impact. Through a series of experiments, a team of scientists has pinpointed some of the factors that cause icebergs to capsize, offering insights into how climate change may affect Earth's waters.

Source: AGU Advances

Rising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are known to raise temperatures in Earth’s atmosphere. But slow feedback processes, including heat storage in the ocean and changes in the carbon cycle, mean that sometimes, such temperature changes don’t manifest right away; it can take decades, or even millennia, for Earth to reach equilibrium.

However, different climate models generate vastly different estimates of when such an equilibrium will be reached. One reason for these differences is the “pattern effect,” or the way uneven sea surface temperature changes can create distinct ocean warming patterns that affect atmospheric circulation and thus cloud cover, precipitation, and heat transfer. This complex interplay of factors can increase or decrease warming and shape the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases.

One way to help predict what long-term warming patterns might look like is to turn to the past. Unearthing patterns in paleoclimate data, especially from times when Earth experienced a warmer climate, can provide insight into future warming patterns. Zhang et al. analyzed 10 million years of sea surface temperature records to determine the relative warming of different ocean regions under rising CO2 levels.

The study used the Western Pacific Warm Pool, the planet’s largest and warmest surface water body, as a reference point, comparing its sea surface temperature data with those of 17 other ocean sites to establish a global warming pattern.

The researchers then compared the warming shown in these paleoclimate data with the results of several models that simulate warming on the basis of an abrupt quadrupling of CO2 compared to preindustrial levels. They found the paleoclimate data and modeled results showed similar millennia-scale warming patterns, especially at higher latitudes. When both were compared to the past 160 years of sea surface temperature measurements, however, there were some differences in warming patterns. Modern warming is still in a transient state, influenced by ocean heat uptake, whereas the paleopattern represents the full equilibrium response.

It will take thousands of years to reach a new equilibrium, the researchers note. The study suggests that compared to the current transient warming, future warming patterns will be stronger at middle and high latitudes, including the North Pacific, North Atlantic, and Southern oceans. This high-latitude warming will likely be stronger than previous estimates suggested, and it is more pronounced in millennial-level than in century-level projections. (AGU Advances, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV001719, 2025)

—Rebecca Owen (@beccapox.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: Owen, R. (2025), Paleoclimate patterns offer hints about future warming, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250336. Published on 15 September 2025. Text © 2025. AGU. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.

Over the course of millennia, insects, spiders, and other arthropods in tropical forests have evolved in response to natural weather cycles like the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

With climate change, however, these global-scale phenomena are strengthening and becoming more frequent, and arthropods are unable to adapt. In a new study published in Nature, researchers found evidence that El Niño events influenced by global warming are chipping away at the diversity and functions of arthropods in tropical forests around the world.

To understand the effect of ENSO on arthropods, researchers led by University of Hong Kong entomologist Adam Sharp extracted data from studies conducted in tropical forests that have not been commercially altered by human activity, such as Barro Colorado Island in Panama, Mount Wilhelm in Papua New Guinea, and Kibale National Park in Uganda. These datasets included samples on arthropod diversity collected for 48 different species from 35 sites.

Using that information, the researchers created a model that allowed them to identify long-term trends in the diversity of different arthropod families through El Niño events from the 1990s until 2020.

They found a general decline among all the orders they analyzed, which included spiders, beetles, butterflies, cockroaches, termites, and other bugs. The only exception was Diptera, an insect order that includes flies and mosquitoes. Diptera was the only order whose species demonstrated increasing population trends during ENSO events.

Using this model, researchers were able to predict future declines as well as document current trends. They found that the most significant losses of biodiversity would most likely be among spiders, bugs, and butterflies.

The scientists also created a separate model to identify the effects of El Niño on the ecological services provided by arthropods, such as pollination, soil health, and pest control. To do so, they gathered data from studies that measured the amount of tree litter in tropical forests and the amount of damage to plant leaves caused by herbivore arthropods.

“In the models of leaf herbivory, we saw a big decline in the amount of leaves consumed by arthropods after around the year 2000. And this correlated strongly with what we predicted for the diversity of arthropods which would probably inflict that damage,” said Sharp. The model coincided with a decline in beetles in particular, he noted.

Mismatched Life Cycles

“Every time there’s a strong El Niño event, some of that biodiversity is chipped away and it doesn’t have time to recover before the next El Niño event.”

Sharp said that both models, although designed independently, support the same conclusion: “It looks as if every time there’s a strong El Niño event, some of that biodiversity is chipped away and it doesn’t have time to recover before the next El Niño event.”

Oliverio Delgado-Carrillo, an entomologist at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México who did not participate in the new study, said Sharp’s findings make sense in light of his own research, which focuses on a pollinator bee species associated with Mexican pumpkin flowers.

Delgado-Carrillo contributed to a paper published earlier this year in Global Change Biology that addressed the effects of climate change on the relationship between plants and pollinators.

Delgado-Carrillo and other researchers found that in general, flowers are beginning to bloom earlier, causing a mismatch between the life cycles of pollinators and their food supply. The pumpkin flowers studied by Delgado-Carrillo, for instance, bloomed before bees emerged from the soil, limiting the time available for pollination.

Sharp agreed with Delgado-Carrillo that more severe ENSO events will most likely cause more of these temporal mismatches between arthropods and plants.

Both researchers said the consequences of the decline in arthropod diversity are hard to predict but will likely be severe and far-reaching. In addition to effects on crops that rely on pollinators, for example, scientists point out that soil health would plummet without cockroaches processing leaf litter and other organic materials that provide nutrients to tropical soils.

In addition, Delgado-Carrillo expressed concern that without insects to control their populations, some opportunistic plants benefiting from climate change might outcompete less resilient species. “Herbivores are functioning as a kind of control mechanism for all those plants that could become dominant and interfere with these ecosystem processes,” he explained.

Filling the Data Gaps

Finally, Sharp and Delgado-Carrillo agreed that more research about ENSO and arthropods in tropical forests is needed. Sharp emphasized the knowledge gap surrounding tropical Africa and Southeast Asia in particular.

Yves Basset, an entomologist from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, works on what’s most likely the only long-term continuous monitoring program of arthropods in tropical Latin America. His team’s work was one of the main sources of information for Sharp’s study, although he did not directly participate in the research himself.

For Basset, financing more projects like his in all tropical forests around the world is vital for understanding the effects of human-induced climate change on arthropods, especially for cyclic events like ENSO.

—Roberto González (@perrobertogg.bsky.social), Science Writer

Citation: González, R. (2025), El Niño may be driving insect decline in the tropics, Eos, 106, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025EO250339. Published on 15 September 2025. Text © 2025. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.