Map of New Orleans Highlights Sinking and Stable City Spots
The geography of New Orleans resembles a bowl, and it's protected from flooding by a system of earthen levees, concrete flood walls, pumps and canals that took the Army Corps of Engineers nearly 15 years and $15 billion to build. That makes it particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and other environmental stresses.
'Subsidence can compromise protective infrastructure over time,' said Leonard Ohenhen, an expert on remote sensing at the University of California, Irvine, who was not involved in the study. 'I hope we get more work like this, quantifying subsidence over time in cities.'
As levees and flood walls sink, they can crack and accumulate structural damage. They also become shorter, making them less effective against storm surges and rising sea levels. That's a particularly big concern in New Orleans because the Gulf of Mexico has the fastest sea level rise in the country.
To assess where and how quickly land elevation in New Orleans has changed in recent decades, the authors of the new study, published in the journal Science Advances, used radar collected by satellites over two time periods, from 2002 to 2007 and from 2016 to 2020. In each period, a satellite passed over the city multiple times, letting researchers compare elevations over time. The later time series included the levee system and wetlands. The researchers then compiled a map showing the land's rising and sinking over time.
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CBS News
12 minutes ago
- CBS News
Denver Museum of Nature & Science showing off dinosaur fossil found in parking lot; oldest in city's history
One of Colorado's most astonishing and coincidental fossil discoveries was found earlier this year, right beneath the parking lot of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, museum officials announced last week. While drilling for a geothermal tap in January, museum scientists decided to take the opportunity to study what lay below the surface. To their surprise, they hit something unexpected: a dinosaur bone. Patrick O'Connor, director of Earth and space sciences at the museum, recalled the moment vividly. "He said, 'there's a fossil in the core,'" O'Connor said. "Really?" What makes the discovery so improbable is how precisely the fossil had to be struck. Crews had to drill in just the right spot, at just the right depth, and then puncture the bone with a core bit only a couple of inches wide. "In the mud was this," O'Connor said, referring to the sample. "It looks like a piece of dinosaur bone." Regardless of its appearance, researchers confirmed that it's the oldest and deepest fossil ever found in Denver. "Given the age of the rocks where this was found, it's estimated to be about 67 million years ago," O'Connor said. "There were not a number of large animals on the surface of the planet at that time other than dinosaurs." "In my 35 years at the museum, we've never had an opportunity quite like this, to study the deep geologic layers beneath our feet with such precision," said Earth Sciences Research Associate Bob Raynolds. "That this fossil turned up here, in City Park, is nothing short of magical." Although scientists don't yet know which specific species it belonged to, they've narrowed it down to a group of plant-eating dinosaurs based on the bone's structure. "The bones that make up their backbone are constructed differently," O'Connor said. "So even though we can't tell you all of the details about it just by looking at the structure of the bone, we know it pertains to one group of plant-eating dinosaurs." The fossil is now on display in the museum's "Teen Rex" exhibit. "Everyone can discover," O'Connor said. "Everyone can participate in science."
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘The new normal?' What the die-off mystery in the Keys means for endangered sawfish
Nearly two years after one of the planet's rarest fish began washing up dead in the Lower Keys, scientists investigating the deaths say one thing seems certain: whatever caused it will likely be around for years to come. 'We're gonna probably have this tax on the sawfish population indefinitely. We're now introducing a new component of natural mortality that's going to kill somewhere between X and Y number of sawfish,' said Ross Boucek, a marine biologist with the Bonefish and Tarpon Trust. 'The question is how do we recoup that tax?' To do that, they'll need to better understand conditions caused by an ocean heat wave that slammed Florida before the deaths, and to try to find ways to prevent them. READ MORE: As sawfish deaths mounted, wildlife officers and researchers scrambled to respond, records show Months after the record-breaking summer heatwave, which killed coral, seagrass and other marine life, endangered smalltooth sawfish began dying in the winter of early 2024, mostly in the Lower Keys. Boucek, who earned his doctorate looking at impacts from extreme climate events like hurricanes, temperature changes and drought, said scientists feared the prolonged high temperatures would ignite such cascading events. 'With extreme events, there's always going to be some unpredictability to what the ecological response is, which makes them very challenging because you've never seen them before,' he said. 'When you have them, you expect this weirdness to follow.' Florida sawfish once roamed waters from the Indian River Lagoon north to the Carolinas. But loss of habitat from developing coasts and getting caught in commercial fishing nets and longlines nearly wiped them out. Today, they can mostly be found only in South Florida. Eventually, at least 64 sawfish were confirmed dead amid hundreds of reported sightings of sick sawfish. Signs of looming trouble appeared in the Lower Keys months before the sawfish started dying when fishing guides started seeing dozens of other species spinning and showing signs of distress. Few died, so the mysterious ailment was concerning but not alarming. Then sawfish began washing up dead in the same shallow waters, launching an unusual rescue effort. Scientists suspected a bottom-dwelling algae early on after they detected higher than normal levels as part of an ongoing monitoring effort to look for ciguatera. Sawfish belong to the ray family and feed on the sea floor, so it made sense. 'T his heat wave changed something for this algae,' Boucek said, which can bloom and become toxic with an increase in nutrients from either leaky septics and storm run-off, a fish kill or seagrass die-offs. 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'It could be it was this temporary ecological response that we saw, where we have this reverberation of the system,' he said. 'It happens once and then we don't ever see it again at the same intensity.' Then in November, Boucek spotted the first spinning fish. Other sightings followed. In late December, a dead sawfish was found. But by January, things quieted down, with far fewer dead sawfish. By March, the month sightings peaked the year before, there were only about half the number of reports for spinning fish and less than a dozen dead sawfish. Scientists monitoring water also didn't see spikes in levels of the toxic algae that they saw the year before. Boucek said that suggests a number of things: a different toxic algae could be involved. Or it could be that the dead sawfish had been infected during the previous event and were just now dying. It could also mean that there just weren't very many of the endangered fish left for the algae to kill. While scientists continue to look at the source of the toxin and what triggers it, Boucek said a closer look is needed to understand the current sawfish population so it can be better protected. Charlotte Harbor was once considered the main area where sawfish gave birth, and the focus of much of the state's research. But it's possible sawfish critical habitat extends much further, south to Naples, throughout the Ten Thousands Islands and in the shallow bays, creeks and flats in the Everglades and Florida Bay. 'The question really is was that entire southwest coast a nursery habitat or a juvenile habitat for them at one point in time, but now the only places that are available are the ones that are protected and not developed,' he said. Restoring and protecting those areas could help stabilize the population and also benefit tarpon, snook and other fish that share the same waters, he said. That would help prepare for the next time. 'Is this going to be the new normal?' he said. 'If it comes back at the same intensity that it did in the past, I mean we can't lose 54 sawfish every year.' This story was originally published by WLRN and shared in partnership with the Florida Climate Reporting Network, a multi-newsroom initiative founded by the Miami Herald, the Sun-Sentinel, The Palm Beach Post, the Orlando Sentinel, WLRN Public Media and the Tampa Bay Times Solve the daily Crossword
Forbes
42 minutes ago
- Forbes
The Top 6 Weather Conspiracy Theories Debunked
SANTA FE, NM - APRIL 10, 2015: Jet aircraft leave streaks of contrails across the sky above Santa ... More Fe, New Mexico. (Photo by) For whatever reason, many weather conspiracy theories have crawled out of the fringes and into mainstream discussions. Over the years, many of us have tried to play 'Whac-A-Mole' with them, but they live on like 'zombies' marching around the Internet and social media wasteland. Let's try to debunk the top six weather conspiracies currently in circulation right now. Cloud Seeding Let's start here since it has been in the news lately. People have done there 'own research' and concluded that cloud seeding caused the Texas Floods. That has been disproven. While there is plenty of information out there about cloud seeding, it is important to develop a filter to distinguish sales pitch from science. As I recently wrote in my cloud seeding primer, it is not new, and results have been found inconclusive or minimally effective at best. My colleague Tom Gill puts it best that, 'The effect of cloud seeding on the kinds of floods we've seen recently is comparable to striking a match to a raging inferno.' Candidly, I wish it was more effective so that we could eradicate economically harmful drought and raging wildfires like those happening across the U.S. right now. In this photo provided by the National Park Service, smoke from wildfires settles over Grand Canyon ... More National Park in northern Arizona on Friday, July 11, 2025. (Joelle Baird/Grand Canyon National Park) Geoengineering and Chemtrails The concept of geoengineering has been around for decades. As scholar within the field, it has also been referred to as 'climate intervention.' It has been studied by the National Academies and many credible scientific organizations. The American Meteorological Society wrote a policy statement in 2022 that stated, 'Such efforts are now commonly referred to as climate intervention (also called geoengineering): the deliberate manipulation of physical, chemical, or biological aspects of the Earth system with the intention of tempering the harmful effects of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.' Oddly, in recent years, I have noticed a disturbing conflation of geoengineering with misinformation about contrails. A National Weather Service website defines contrails as, 'Condensation trails, frequently called Contrails…. Cloud-like streamers frequently observed to form behind aircraft flying in clear, cold, humid air.' NWS noted two processes for formation. The website went on to say, 'The first method occurs when water vapor that accompanies the exhaust from a jet engine is added to the atmosphere. If the humidifying effect of this moisture addition overcomes the heat of combustion, then exhaust trails will form…. The second process for forming a condensation trail occurs in air that is clear, but almost fully saturated with water vapor. The aerodynamic pressure reduction resultant of air flowing around a propeller or wing tips can cool the air to induce condensation, thus forming 'aerodynamic trails.'' TORONTO, ON - February 3 - The breath of a worker on Yonge St. can be seen in the air on a bitterly ... More cold day in Toronto. Lance McMillan/Toronto StarFebruary-3-2023 (Photo by Lance McMillan/Toronto Star via Getty Images) In my over 30 years of experience as an atmospheric scientist, there are things that I have discovered about public understanding of weather. Concepts like probability of precipitation, concepts that are counter to personal mental models, and multiple processes are challenging. For example, temperature decreases as altitude increases. Most planes are flying in very cold altitudes. Though not a perfect analogy, the breath we 'see' on a cold day helps to visualize what's happening with contrails. They are not mind-altering or weather-controlling sprays. The Royal Aeronautical Society has a great website debunking 'chemtrails.' The American Association for the Advancement of Science is one the largest and most credible science societies in the world. AAAS also debunked them by reviewing perspectives from several top experts. Steering Or Controlling Hurricanes I was literally stunned to see claims that Hurricane Milton or Hurricane Helene were being controlled or created. While on a major network being interviewed about Milton, I was asked about it. Yikes! I find it to be quite disrespectful to all families impacted by such tragic storms. I certainly wish we could steer or control hurricanes so that they could be sent out to sea and not harm a single soul or piece of infrastructure. Every now and then, the idea of 'nuking' hurricanes resurfaces. That thought has been around for a while too, but in a previous piece, I discussed why experts have concluded that's a bad idea. Several years ago people claimed that the U.S. government had a massive cloud machine. It turned out to be a NASA engine test facility in Mississippi. In recent months, it has emerged that some people believe weather radars are being weaponized to control the weather or harm people. CNN's Andrew Freedman documented this trend. TOPSHOT - A drone image shows the dome of Tropicana Field which has been torn open due to Hurricane ... More Milton in St. Petersburg, Florida, on October 10, 2024. At least four people were confirmed killed as a result of two tornadoes triggered by Hurricane Milton on the east coast of the US state of Florida, local authorities said Thursday. (Photo by Bryan R. SMITH / AFP) (Photo by BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP via Getty Images) HAARP Relatively speaking, the HAARP conspiracy theory might be feeling a little neglected these days. It's one that has been around for a while, but it has been in the shadows lately compared to the new batch out there. Like many of these conspiracy theories, HAARP is rooted in real science but has been distorted, conflated, and misrepresented. According to University of Alaska's website, 'The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP, is a scientific endeavor aimed at studying the properties and behavior of the ionosphere.' That is region of the atmosphere about 50 to 400 miles above Earth's surface. The United States Air Force transition the research facility to the university in 2015, and it continues to be used for ionospheric research not weather manipulation. The Northern Lights appear in the sky in Svolvaer, Norway, on October 22, 2023. The Northern Lights ... More occur due to the interplay between the sun and Earth's magnetic field, which propels electrons through the atmosphere at rapid velocities. (Photo by Manuel Romano/NurPhoto via Getty Images) Climate Change Is A Hoax Much of what we are seeing with weather today can likely be associated with something that scientists have warned about for decades. Though weather certainly varies naturally, climate experts warned of an accelerated water cycle, intense rainstorms, sea level rise, mega-heatwaves, and changes to tropical cyclone intensities. While data continues to indicate that most people 'get it' about climate change, there is about 10% of the U.S. population that is dismissive. From that crowd, you typically here 'zombie theories like:' 2024 results from the 6 Americas Study. I wrote an article in 2017 addressing these and there are several good websites out there that debunk them and other common things that we hear. General circulation patterns. The Earth Is Flat While not technically a weather conspiracy theory, there are several aspects of weather, among other things, that disprove the notion that Earth is flat. We can start with imagery from weather satellites or spacecraft. Additionally, the vibrant colors of sunrises and sunsets is an exercise in physics but is a natural process that proves Earth is not flat. A view of Earth from the Space Shuttle Discovery shows late afternoon sun on the Andes Mountains, ... More with glare and heavy cloud illumination. The presence of a warm tropical regions and cold polar regions, respectively, is additional evidence. Earth's equatorial region receives more heat energy from the sun. Atmospheric circulation and ocean currents are, in part, explained by this polar-to-tropical temperature difference. Finally, weather radar beams and their ability to detect storms are affected by Earth's curvature. People cling to conspiracy theories for a multitude of reasons. This 2020 essay provides a deep dive into literacy deficiencies, fear, psychological reasoning, disproportionate weighting of information on the Internet, and other factors that perpetuate them. Radar beams and the curvature of the Earth.
