'Unprecedented' climate exposures for people born in 2020
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CBC
3 hours ago
- CBC
Well-travelled New Brunswick lobster caught off Cape Cod, Mass.
One New Brunswick lobster was headed south for vacation this summer. "They do not pay one bit of attention to any kind of boundary or border," said Heather Koopman, a senior research scientist at the Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Station. "They just go wherever they want to go." Koopman recently documented an extraordinary case of one female lobster who made quite the trek from New Brunswick waters all the way down to those off Massachusetts. Koopman had worked at the station for over 30 years, and currently is conducting a project tagging female lobsters caught around the island to track their movement. WATCH | Female lobsters will travel for breeding season, water temperature: Female lobster travels enormous distance, surprising researchers 1 hour ago A researcher with the Grand Manan Whale and Seabird Research Centre says a female lobster travelled from Grand Manan to Cape Cod, Massachusetts. "They're the ones who are carrying the eggs around. The larvae will hatch, and where will those larvae land and what will the future of the fishery look like?" she said of the motivation behind her current project. The lobsters are tagged with a note that asks anyone who catches the lobster to call Koopman to report where it was picked up. While most reports she gets are from around Grand Manan where the lobsters are tagged, Koopman said she also gets reports from around Campobello and Deer Island, southwest Nova Scotia, and the Maine coast. "And now we can add Cape Cod to the list," she said. Since the project started in 2019, Koopman said about 6,600 lobsters have been tagged. She gets a report about 23 per cent of them. But it was one report on Sunday morning that stood out. Koopman said she got a text message from a Massachusetts area code that sent along GPS co-ordinates of where a lobster had been caught. She looked up the co-ordinates, "and my goodness, it was sort of two miles off Cape Cod," she recounted. The distance from Grand Manan to Provincetown, Mass., where the lobster was caught by fisherman Mike O'Brien, is roughly 220 nautical miles, or about 407 kilometres, as the crow flies. But lobsters don't travel in straight lines, "so goodness knows what ground she covered," Koopman said. The lobster was recorded off Cape Cod just over 250 days after it was tagged off Grand Manan. CBC News was unable to reach O'Brien for comment. Koopman said this data point represents the farthest lobster ever found from where they're tagged in Grand Manan, but it doesn't mean it's the farthest one critter has ever travelled. "A fisherman down there picking up a lobster with a yellow tag and a strange phone number on it probably wouldn't have known about my tagging program, because it's so far away," she said. Koopman said it's hard to know why this particular lobster went for such a trip, but female lobsters will move around according to the season. The species also has a long reproductive season and is exceptionally sensitive to water temperatures. "Laboratory experiments have shown that they can discriminate between .1 degree Celsius, so temperature probably has some role in where she ended up." The longer she's been researching on Grand Manan, Koopman said she's gotten to know the local lobster fishing industry better and has even begun getting help tagging lobsters from some of the island's fishermen. "It's taken time for them to sort of say, 'Why should I participate in this?' And I think some of them find it interesting to say, 'Well, where did this lobster come from?" she said.
CTV News
5 hours ago
- CTV News
Antarctic climate shifts threaten ‘catastrophic' impacts globally
Abrupt and potentially irreversible changes in Antarctica driven by climate change could lift global oceans by metres and lead to 'catastrophic consequences for generations', scientists warned Wednesday. More broadly, a state-of-knowledge review by a score of top experts revealed accelerating shifts across the region that are often both cause and effect of global warming, according to a study published in Nature. ADVERTISEMENT 'Antarctica is showing worrying signs of rapid change across its ice, ocean and ecosystems,' lead author and Australian National University professor Nerilie Abram told AFP. 'Some of these abrupt changes will be difficult to stop.' Shifts in different facets of Antarctica's climate system amplify each other and have accelerated the pace of warming globally as well, she said. The study looked at evidence of abrupt change -- or 'regime shifts' -- in sea ice, regional ocean currents, the continent's ice sheet and ice shelves, and marine life. It also examined how they interact. Floating sea ice does not add to sea level when it melts. But its retreat does replace white surfaces that reflect almost all of the Sun's energy back into space with deep blue water, which absorbs the same amount instead. Ninety percent of the heat generated by manmade global warming is soaked up by oceans. Retreating sea ice After increasing slightly during the first 35 years that satellite data was available, Antarctic sea ice cover plunged dramatically over the last decade. Since 2014, sea ice has retreated on average 120 kilometres (75 miles) from the continent's shoreline. That contraction has happened about three times faster in 10 years than the decline in Arctic sea ice over nearly 50. The 'overwhelming evidence of a regime shift in sea ice' means that, on current trends, Antarctica could essentially become ice free in summer sooner than the Arctic, the study found. This will speed up warming in the region and beyond, and could push some marine species toward extinction. Over the last two years, for example, helpless emperor penguin chicks perished at multiple breeding grounds, drowning or freezing to death when sea ice gave way earlier than usual under their tiny feet. Of five sites monitored in the Bellingshausen Sea region in 2023, all but one experienced a 100 percent loss of chicks, earlier research reported. Unlike sea ice, ice sheets and the ice shelves to which they are connected are on -- or supported by -- land. The world would need to heat up by five degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial levels to melt the entire Antarctic ice sheet, which would lift global oceans an almost unimaginable 58 metres (nearly 200 feet). Point of no return But global warming to date -- on average about 1.3C -- is fast approaching a threshold that would cause part of the ice sheet to generate at least three metres of sea level rise, flooding coastal areas inhabited today by hundreds of millions, the study said. 'Unstoppable collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is one of the most concerning global tipping points,' said Abram. 'The evidence points to this being triggered at global warming well below 2C.' Another potential risk is the collapse of the Antarctic Overturning Circulation, a system of ocean currents that distribute heat and nutrients within the the region and globally. A 'rapid and substantial slowdown' of the currents has already begun, and evidence from the previous interglacial period -- between two ice ages -- before our own, 125,000 years ago, points to an abrupt stagnation of the system under conditions similar to those seen today. 'This would lead to widespread climate and ecosystem impacts,' ranging from an intensification of global warming to a decrease in the ocean's capacity to absorb CO2, the study reported. Ultimately, the only way to slow down the interlocking changes is to stop adding more planet-warming gases into the atmosphere. 'The greenhouse gas emission decisions that we make over the coming decade or two will lock in how much ice we will lose and how quickly it will be lost,' Abram said. By Marlowe Hood
CBC
6 hours ago
- CBC
Keeping tabs on elusive bison
More than a dozen bison are now being electronically tracked across Buffalo Pound Provincial Park in Saskatchewan. People who pop into the park's visitor centre can view the bisons' real-time location on a project will also help with researching the grazing patterns of the bison and how they interact with their environment.
