Latest news with #Olympic-size
Toronto Sun
6 days ago
- Sport
- Toronto Sun
Katie Ledecky and Summer McIntosh, a year after Paris, set to duel at worlds
Published Jul 26, 2025 • 5 minute read Canada's Summer McIntosh celebrates after winning the 400-meter individual relay in Paris. Photo by Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post One is the most decorated, most celebrated, most everything female swimmer ever to dive into an Olympic-size pool. Her name is known worldwide, and somehow, at 28, Katie Ledecky is showing no signs of slowing down. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account The other is a decade younger and somehow making the kind of splash the sport hasn't seen since, well, Ledecky. Canada's Summer McIntosh already has scrawled her name across the record books, and most around the pool deck agree her fastest races are still ahead of her. The two will meet twice in Singapore at the world swimming championships, which start Saturday, including in an 800-meter showdown that is shaping up to be perhaps the most anticipated race of the year. Almost from the time Ledecky slipped on a pair of swim goggles, the 800 freestyle has been her signature event. She was 15 when she won gold in it at the 2012 London Olympics. The world's best distance swimmers have been left gurgling in her wake ever since. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Ledecky has never lost an 800 race in a major meet. Heading into this year, she owned 19 of the 20-fastest 800 times; had set or lowered the world record six times, after breaking it for the first time as a 16-year-old phenom in 2013; and won the past seven world titles and four Olympic golds in the 800. She surprised many in the swimming world when she lowered the record again in May, posting a time of 8 minutes 4.12 seconds at a meet in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. But McIntosh, the all-around dynamo who won three gold medals at last summer's Paris Games, decided to formally add the 800 to her program this year, and she already has made clear to the world she will be a formidable challenger to Ledecky's dominance – and, just maybe, the 800 record. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Barely one month after Ledecky set the Fort Lauderdale pool on fire, McIntosh put up the third-fastest 800 time in Victoria, British Columbia, turning in an 8:05.07 finish at the Canadian trials, nearly five seconds faster than her previous best. Both swimmers have a busy week ahead in Singapore, but the 800 final next Saturday will draw the brightest spotlight. Rarely is Ledecky pushed to the final wall, and rarely is McIntosh the chaser. 'I think it's always nicer to have someone right beside you,' McIntosh told reporters this month. 'It gives you that extra motivation.' Both swimmers will open the championships with qualifying heats in the 400 free Sunday morning (Saturday night Eastern time), with the finals scheduled for that evening. There was a time Ledecky dominated that distance, too, winning gold at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and four world titles between 2013 and 2022. But both Australia's Ariarne Titmus and McIntosh have surpassed Ledecky's world record from 2016. McIntosh posted a time of 3:54.18 at last month's Canadian trials, one of three world records she broke there. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. While the 24-year-old Titmus is skipping these world championships, saying she's focusing her attention on the 2028 Olympics, Ledecky is certainly still a podium favorite in the 400. She posted a time of 3:56.81 in May, which was her fastest 400 time in nearly nine years and the eighth-fastest ever. 'Anytime I get to race Katie, it's a learning experience, and it's always a good race,' McIntosh said. 'I'm really excited to match up with her again in Singapore in the 400 free and the 800. … I think we bring the best out of each other.' One advantage for Ledecky in Singapore: McIntosh is swimming both the 400 and the 200 individual medley in the same session, a grueling double, mentally and physically. Ledecky, meanwhile, is not expected to tackle any doubles at these world championships. Her program is identical to the one she swam at the Paris Games: 400 free, 1,500 free, 4×200 freestyle relay and the 800 free. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'Things are clicking with my stroke,' Ledecky told reporters at the U.S. trials in June. 'I've got a lot of confidence. Training has been going really well. Consistency on all fronts has led to this.' RECOMMENDED VIDEO Even as younger swimmers have emerged to top her best times in the 200 and 400 free, Ledecky has remained unbeatable at the longest distances. She has lowered the 1,500 record six times and has posted the event's 23 fastest times. In Fort Lauderdale, she turned in a 15:24.51 finish, the second-best ever and her fastest mark in seven years. The Singapore competition is Ledecky's seventh world championship, more than any other U.S. swimmer. With 21 world titles, she is already the most decorated female swimmer of all time. While Michael Phelps has 26 golds in his career, Ledecky has more individual titles – 16 to 15 – and looks to add to that total in Singapore. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Entering her third world championships, McIntosh, in many ways, is still getting started. She has established herself as the best female all-around swimmer, winning both medley races in Paris, and after these world championships she is moving to Texas, where she will begin training with Bob Bowman, Phelps's former coach, to prepare for the Los Angeles Games. She has made clear she wants to build on her Paris program, and the 800 could represent her best chance at a fifth individual event. McIntosh competed in the 800 at the Tokyo Olympics when she was 14 but failed to reach the final. The 800 mostly fell off her race program, but then McIntosh made waves when she beat Ledecky in an 800 race in February 2024 at an under-the-radar meet in Orlando. It was Ledecky's first 800 loss since 2010, when she was 13. McIntosh opted against competing in the 800 in Paris, though, because it conflicted with the 200 IM. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. While McIntosh acknowledges the 800 clash with Ledecky in Singapore 'will be really awesome,' she's hesitant to declare the race a permanent part of her program. She said it's still not a sure thing as she considers her 2028 targets. There is still a lot of time before Los Angeles – and for McIntosh, that probably means more medals and more records. 'I think the fun part of the sport is not knowing how fast you're going to swim at a meet. Those unknowns are really fun,' McIntosh said. 'I'm feeling really strong in training. Basically, all the work is done at this point.' 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Scientific American
25-07-2025
- Science
- Scientific American
What It's Like to Live and Work on the Greenland Ice Sheet
This story was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center. This story was made possible through the assistance of the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs. Rachel Feltman: For Scientific American 's Science Quickly, I'm Rachel Feltman. Five and a half trillion tons. That's how much ice has melted out of the Greenland ice sheet since just 2002. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. It's a number almost too large to wrap your head around. But if you took that much water and used it to fill Olympic-size pools—which hold [about] 600,000 gallons, by the way—you'd have a lap pool for every person living in Africa and Europe, all 2.2 billion of them. The reason we know this is that for more than 20 years, satellites have been watching and measuring the so-called mass loss from Greenland's ice sheet—one of only two ice sheets in the world. Antarctica is the other one. What science doesn't know is how the Greenland ice sheet might come apart. And that's a really important question to answer, since it has a total of 24 feet of sea-level rise still locked up in its icy mass. Today on the show we're talking to one of our own: Jeff DelViscio, the head of multimedia at SciAm and executive producer of the podcast. Last year Jeff ventured out onto the ice sheet for a month. He went with members of a scientific expedition whose sole goal was to drill through the ice to get the rock below, and he's going to tell us why that matters when it comes to Greenland and the future of the ice sheet. Thanks for coming onto the show, Jeff. Jeff DelViscio: Thanks for having me, Rachel. Feltman: So why did you go to Greenland? What was this expedition all about? DelViscio: This was a project called GreenDrill, and GreenDrill is primarily based out of two institutions, where there are two co-PIs—so principal investigators—who are working on it: one at Columbia University and one at the University at Buffalo. And they have pulled this project together that was meant to go into different parts of Greenland and selectively sample the ice sheet to be able to figure out what was going on with it: its state, its health and how they could push the science forward on what they understand about the Greenland ice sheet and how it's built and, ultimately, how it comes apart. Feltman: What was life actually like on an ice sheet? Do you feel like you were prepared, or were there any surprises that came your way? DelViscio: I was absolutely not prepared. This was my first reporting in a polar zone, and once you get there you realize that a big part of your safety and well-being really depends on the people who are there with you ... Feltman: Mm. DelViscio: And there was decades' worth of experience out there on the ice sheet, and we can talk about this, but it took a long time to actually get to where I was going, and that was a whole part of the process. But once I actually arrived on the ice sheet proper, I think the first day I was there, temperatures were right around –20 degrees Fahrenheit [about –28.9 degrees Celsius]. Feltman: Wow. DelViscio: And the first night I slept on it, I actually was at a place in the middle of the ice sheet, at a Danish ice-coring camp, in transit over to the, the final location where the GreenDrill team was doing their work, and they had these 6x6 [foot] tents called Arctic ovens—it was not an oven inside. But those were out right on the ice sheet. And they said, 'Well, camp is pretty full. You should probably go out and sleep in a tent because you need to get used to it. You're gonna be out here for a while.' And so I did that, and it was a real experience, that first night. DelViscio (tape): So I guess I kind of asked for this. I wanted to go here and do this story. It's fine [laughs]. It's just maybe a rough first go, but I can try to go to bed, see if I can get some sleep. This is what it is right now. This is good practice. There's actually a station here, so if I really get uncomfortable, I suppose I could go inside. That's not gonna be the case if we hit the field camp. Um, yeah, glorious reporting work in the polar arctic. Here we are. Goodnight day one on the Greenland ice sheet. DelViscio: It was about –20 outside and maybe about 10 degrees, 15 degrees better in the, in the tent, so all night about zero [degrees F, or about –17.8 degrees C], –5 [degrees F, or about –20.6 degrees C], –10 [degrees F, or about –23.3 degrees C], and it was also at about 8,500 feet [2,590.8 meters] on the top of the ice sheet ... Feltman: Mm. DelViscio: Which, you know, you're kind of on a mountain already; it's like being in the Rockies but on the top of a big, wide ice sheet. In every direction you look there's nothing—there's no features; there's nothing—and you're just laying on ice all night, and it, it was painful ... Feltman: Yeah. DelViscio: I'm not gonna lie about it; it was painful. And you have a sleeping bag that's rated at –40 degrees [F, or –40 degrees C], and you have a hot-water bottle that you put in to, to try to warm yourself up, but my face was sort of sticking out of the mummy-bag hole, and I would breathe and there would just be ice crystals forming on my beard and face ... Feltman: Wow. DelViscio: As I breathed out, so a little bit of a rough intro. But I did question why I was there. DelViscio (tape): Well, I made it through my first night. I wouldn't say it was pleasant—really cold the whole time [laughs]. That's—tough to get comfortable at any point. I don't know how people do this for long periods of time. Brutal, yeah. But I made it. DelViscio: But I did get through it, and there was a lot of experience, like I said, people who knew what they were doing, which really helped. Feltman: Yeah, well, you mentioned that getting out there took a really long time. How did you get there, and where did you end up? DelViscio: Yeah, so it's a process, and I had no idea how any of this worked before I, I got on the expedition, but typically, the U.S. military actually flies a lot of the science flights because there's a bit of history, and I—i n my feature you can read a little bit about that—because the U.S. military's been out on the, on the ice for decades for other reasons than ice-core research and climatology research but I went to a base in upstate New York, got on a big cargo plane ... Air Force announcer: In the event of a loss of pressurization issue, if you're to look over your left or right shoulder, there's a vertical rectangular panel on the wall ... DelViscio: Which flew to Kangerlussuaq, basically a staging location where all the science people kind of come in from all different parts of the world. You sort of sit there and you wait until the conditions are right so you can get onto another cargo plane ... DelViscio (tape): So this is it. We're in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, and today we're shipping out to the ice. [CLIP: Sound of a Hercules C-130 cargo plane throttling up] DelViscio: Which then takes you and your whole crew out to, for us, a staging location, the Danish ice-coring site I mentioned, out in the middle of the ice 'cause it's too far to go directly to the site. DelViscio (tape): Okay, here we are: Greenland ice sheet. This is the EastGRIP [East Greenland Ice-Core Project] Danish site. It is cold. My camera's not loving this, but here we are. There's a station behind me and the sun just trying to peek through. Just came in on the Air National Guard C-130. They're pulling our stuff over. Here we go. DelViscio: Once you get on that smaller plane and, you know, manage all the weather and get out there in time, you sort of sit there and you kind of load up a smaller cargo plane ... [CLIP: Sound of a Twin Otter cargo plane throttling up] DelViscio: To take you yet another step, the final leg, to the GreenDrill site, which is out in the northeast part of Greenland—literally the middle of nowhere: hundreds of miles in every direction, there's just ice and you. [CLIP: Sound of wind blowing across the ice sheet at the GreenDrill camp] DelViscio: So it's a real production. It took about 20 flights for all ... Feltman: Wow. DelViscio: Of the people, logistics and gear. There's probably about 20,000 pounds' worth of gear, including the drilling equipment that we had to take. So it takes a week just to get there, and then you're sort of flat-out working once you actually do get there; the team knows that there's only so much time and there's a closing window, so it's kind of a scramble, but it's a long scramble just to get to there. Feltman: And where exactly are all those planes and gear going to? DelViscio: So they're going to a totally unpopulated part of the northeast Greenland ice sheet, but it was a really important location, and it was picked for a reason. Imagine this sort of large dome of ice. The way in which it actually moves—and it does move—is that snow falls on the top and sort of compresses, then spills out across the ice sheet, and part of that spill-out happens through these things called ice streams. And they're like a stream you would imagine in the water world, but they're just made of fully solid ice, and they're literally flowing away from the top of the ice sheet at a speed that's a lot faster than the surrounding ice, so you can actually see them in satellite data. And so we were positioned right at the edge of something called the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream, which drains about 12 to 16 percent of the ice sheet, so, like, basically over 10 percent of the water that's kind of going out and moving to the sea, getting into glaciers and then going into the ocean comes through this massive ice stream, which is really just this big tongue of ice moving faster than the surrounding parts of it. That location is really important to understand how the ice sheet loses its mass, and if you sample at just the right point, then you can understand, in this really critical portion of the ice sheet, exactly how that ice stream works in terms of keeping the ice either growing or shrinking, and right now it's really shrinking, so they wanna understand how these streams can play a part in pulling the ice sheet apart itself. Feltman: Yeah, let's talk more about the science. What kind of experiments are going on here? DelViscio: Yeah, so there's all of this ice, right? And in the past 60 years or so people have gone to the Greenland ice sheet to basically pull these long tubes of ice out of the ice sheet itself and use the ice as a record of climate change because ice is laid down yearly and it's basically like a tree ring ... Feltman: Mm-hmm. DelViscio: But in an ice sheet. And if you pull out large sections of it from the middle of the ice sheet, you can get up to [roughly] 125,000 years of climate: the snow falls, it compresses it captures the air that was above it at the time in little air bubbles, so the ice cores are these records of climate going into the past. Everyone was always focused on the ice, since the, like, '60s: 'What can the ice tell us about climate? How can we connect it up to other records of climate change and paleoclimate in the other parts of the world?' But no one, or very few people, looked underneath it. And the important part about being underneath the ice sheet is that the rock itself that's under the ice sheet tells you something about when it's had ice on it and when it hasn't, and when it hasn't is a really important part of that because if we're wondering about how the ice sheet breaks up, we really have to know how quickly that's happened in the past. And at this point science has very little idea about how that actually works. So what they did was: We were out there with these small drills, packed up in kind of containers. You take the drill and you drill all the way through the ice ... [CLIP: Sound of the Winkie Drill drilling through the ice sheet] DelViscio: And you're not happy when you get to the bottom of it—you stop, and then you keep going, and you pull the rock out from underneath the ice. The game here is to do measurements on that rock and see what it will tell you about when this place had ice and when it didn't. There is kind of a great quote from one of the co-principal investigators on the project that really kind of summed up why they started doing this. Here's what he had to say. Joerg Schaefer: [In] 2016 was the first study that was led by us that shows that you have these tools, these geochemical isotopic tools, to interview bedrock, and the bedrock actually talks to us. Since then it's clear to us, at least, that that's a new branch of science that is absolutely critical—it's really at the interface of basic geochemical and climate science and societal impact. It's one of these rare occasions that there is direct contact between basic research and scientific impact and questions like climate and social justice, so it's a very—scientifically, an extremely exciting time. [In] the same moment I must say that everything we have found out so far is very scary. And I kind of have, [for] the first time ever in my career, I have datasets that I—take my sleep away at night, simply because they are so direct and tell me, 'Oof, this ice sheet is in so much trouble.' DelViscio: That's Joerg Schaefer from Columbia University. Feltman: What was it about those datasets that he found so troubling? DelViscio: Sure, so I just talked about that long ice core that they pulled from the middle of the ice sheet and using that as a record. In the 1990s one of those was pulled at a place called GISP2, which is the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 site. It was an American site, and they went further than anybody else had in the past, and once they got through the entirety of that ice, about 10,000 feet worth of ice, they pushed the drill farther, slammed it down into the rock and pulled some rocks out. Now, the ice core went off to be in thousands and thousands of other papers connected to records all over the world; the rock underneath went to a freezer and got stored, and people basically forgot about it. Joerg Schaefer and Jason Briner of the University at Buffalo, in the early 2010s they realized that that rock could tell you something, and now they had chemical tools to analyze that rock in a way that it hadn't [been] before. And so they went back and got that rock, they tested it, and in 2016 they published a paper that showed: at that site in the middle of the ice sheet, their chemical tests told them that it was ice-free within the last million years. That means the whole ice sheet was gone. Feltman: Wow. DelViscio: And that was way quicker than anybody thought was possible. And so that spurred this whole next step, which was: 'If we got more of these rocks from different parts of the ice sheet, what else will it tell us about how quickly this happens?' Jason Briner: The bed of the ice sheet contains a history of the ice that covers it—basically the words, the stories of the history of the ice sheet. It's a book of information down there that we want to read if we can get those samples. DelViscio: That's Jason Briner. So that was the seed of this whole thing. So if you stick this soda straw down into the rock and you pull it back out, you can test multiple locations, and it could tell you, 'Here there was no ice then. Here there was no ice then. Here there was no ice then,' around the ice sheet as a way to sort of test ... Feltman: Hmm. DelViscio: How it sort of shrinks back to its teeny-tiny state. Feltman: And how do you get that kind of signal out of a rock? DelViscio: It's complicated [laughs]. It—you know, I wasn't a chemistry major in, in school; I was a geology major. But one of the researchers in the field, Allie Balter-Kennedy, you know, she has a good way of thinking about it. Why don't I just pull Allie in to talk about how this signal comes into the rock? Allie Balter-Kennedy: So there's cosmic rays that come in from outer space at all times, and when they interact with rocks they create these nuclear reactions that create isotopes or nuclides that we don't otherwise find on Earth. And we know the rate at which those nuclides are produced, so if we can measure them, we can figure out how long that rock has been exposed to these cosmic rays—or, kind of in our field, how long that rock has been ice-free. And so when you do that underneath an ice sheet, you get a sense of when the last time the rock was exposed and also how long it was exposed for, so it's a pretty powerful method for learning about times when ice was smaller than it is now. DelViscio: These nuclides are the signal inside the rock. If you can tell how much of it is in the rock and how quickly those signals should decay, if you see jumps in that signal, you can tell that ice was over top of it and it stopped the barrage from the universe, so it turned the signal on and off. Feltman: Hmm. DelViscio: And that's sort of how they look at the signal, is like: 'Is it on; is it off? Is it on; is it off?' And that tells you, in a way: 'There was ice over top, or there wasn't. There was ice over top, or there wasn't.' Feltman: Wow, yes, that does sound very complicated [laughs] but also very cool. Did the team end up actually getting what they were after? DelViscio: Yeah, so it was kind of down to the line. After all the traveling and all the logistics, and there was some weather and delays, and there [were] cargo flights that couldn't land, basically, everything got compressed into about three weeks on the ice at the site. That's not a whole lot of time to do what they were trying to do. It's a spoiler alert, but if you read the feature, you'll hear about exactly how this happened, but they did end up getting not just one of these samples, but two ... Feltman: Hmm. DelViscio: From two different sites, which you can sort of test against each other to make sure you got the right stuff. All the way to the last few days before extraction they were drilling, trying to get the rock samples. But there was this moment out on the ice, right towards when we sort of wrapped up, where I remember it felt unseasonably warm. [CLIP: Sound of the members of the GreenDrill team around the Winkie Drill] DelViscio: It was about 25 degrees [F, or about –3.9 degrees C], which is balmy ... Feltman: Yeah. DelViscio: On the ice sheet. And honestly, the, the drill was just, after going through a couple rounds where it was tough going, sort of sliced like, you know, a knife through hot bread down to the ice and got the rock out, and they got this beautiful long core. Caleb Walcott-George: Heavy! Elliot Moravec: That there's genuine rock core. Walcott-George: Oh, baby. DelViscio: I just remember, Caleb Walcott-George, who was one of the scientists on the expedition, just, like, hoisted it like it was, like, this prized bass. Feltman: Yeah. DelViscio: And there was sort of this shout all around the camp. Walcott-George: Oh, too late [laughs]! Tanner Kuhl: I was just baiting ya. DelViscio: And when they closed the hole they had this liquor called Gammel Dansk, which is this Danish liqueur, but they call it 'driller's fluid.' Moravec: There it is. Forest Harmon: You gotta lace it right down in the casing, dude. DelViscio: And they poured one down the hole to close it out as a way to sort of give the hole something back. Moravec: Bottoms up. Walcott-George: You wanna see something I made? Moravec: That's all she wrote. Kuhl: Well-done. DelViscio: It was this really clean finish to what had been a pretty stressful couple weeks, just trying to get samples back with the window of time closing. So it was a, a nice moment out on the ice and, you know, just had music playing, and it felt like not the end of the world in the middle of an ice sheet but a tight-knit science camp where things were going right. Feltman: Yeah, that must've been really cool 'cause I feel like there's not a lot of field work where, when you get the thing you're looking for, it's, like, sturdy and hoistable [laughs], so that's fun. DelViscio: For sure. Feltman: And I'm sure, you know, there's gonna be years of follow-up research on this data, but what are they learning from their time in the field? DelViscio: They had a, a site in another part of Greenland from the year before where they did the same kind of work, and they're just at the point at where they're publishing that. And what it looks like is that there's this place called Prudhoe Dome, which is in the northwest part of Greenland, where there was this big ice dome, and what those tests told them was: it looked very probable within the Holocene, so in the last 10,000 years, that the ice was completely gone there. Feltman: Hmm. DelViscio: And it was a lot of ice to take away that quickly. Again, it's, you know, you're sort of going from this 2016 paper, which says a million years ago it was ice-free—a million years is a long time. Feltman: Yeah. DelViscio: But even a sample in a place where there's a whole lot of ice in the northwest of Greenland and having it gone within the last 10,000 years, with climatic conditions that are close to what we're experiencing now, that puts it on a 'our threat' kind of level. Feltman: Yeah. DelViscio: Because ultimately, you know, if the whole of the ice sheet melted, that's 24 feet of sea-level rise. That means massive migration, totally changes the surface of the planet. But you don't need 24 feet to really mess some stuff up. So even five inches or 10 inches or a foot and a half is kind of life-changing for coastal communities around the world. Every amount of exactitude they can get on how this thing changes, breaks up and melts is just a little bit more help for humanity in terms of planning for that kind of scenario, which, given the state of our climate, seems like we're gonna get more melt before we get it growing back, so it's definitely coming—the, the melt is coming; the flood is coming. Feltman: Well, thanks so much for coming on to share some of your Greenland story with us, Jeff. DelViscio: Of course, I was happy to freeze my butt off to get this story for our readers and listeners [laughs]. Feltman: That's all for today's episode. Science Quickly is produced by me, Rachel Feltman, along with Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper, Naeem Amarsy and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was edited and reported by Jeff DelViscio. You can check out his July/ August cover story, ' Greenland's Frozen Secret,' on the website now. We'll put a link to it in our show notes, too. Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck fact check our show. Our theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Special thanks to the whole GreenDrill team, including Allie Balter-Kennedy, Caleb Walcott-George, Joerg Schaefer, Jason Briner, Tanner Kuhl, Forest Harmon, Elliot Moravec, Matt Anfinson, Barbara Olga Hild, Arnar Pall Gíslason and Zoe Courville for all their insights and support in the field. Jeff's reporting was supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center and made possible through the assistance of the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs. For Science Quickly, this is Rachel Feltman.
NBC Sports
23-07-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
For Gretchen Walsh, a journey to a possible gold rush at World Swimming Championships
Gretchen Walsh goes into the World Swimming Championships with a chance to win not just her first individual global long-course gold medal, but a few of them. Walsh, 22, has broken the 100m butterfly world record on three occasions (including twice in one day). She won nine individual NCAA titles over four seasons at Virginia (25-yard pools) and claimed five individual golds at one World Short Course Championships (25-meter pool) last December. In Olympic-size pools (50 meters), Walsh owns the world's best time this year in the 50m and 100m butterflies and the 50m freestyle. She's also third-fastest in the 100m free. Plus she is expected to swim on three U.S. relays that could take gold in Singapore. Less than two years ago, Walsh was aware of those labeling her a 'bathtub swimmer' — that she had more success in smaller, short-course pools than in Olympic-size pools that require more strokes. Nick Zaccardi, Now she could win the most medals of any swimmer at these long-course worlds. Missy Franklin's female record six titles at a single edition (individuals plus relays) is not out of the question. If it wasn't already clear, Walsh made her ambitions known upon being chosen the nation's top women's college athlete across all sports on June 30. 'It's weird now with my personal records being the fastest of all time,' she said virtually at the Honda Cup ceremony. 'It's been totally a different mental game for myself, and I've had to approach the sport differently, but I really enjoy a challenge. That's what sports are about. So I'm looking forward to breaking more world records, hopefully, and getting up on the podium at worlds because I've never made the top of the podium at a summer world championship, so that's a new goal of mine.' The 6-foot-1 Walsh steadily climbed to this moment. 2016: Qualified for the Rio Olympic Trials nine days before the meet and was, at age 13, the youngest of more than 1,500 swimmers there. 2021: Fifth in the 50m free at the Tokyo Olympic Trials after her senior year of high school at Nashville's Harpeth Hall (notable alum: Tracy Caulkins, arguably the best all-around female swimmer in U.S. history). 2022: Missed World Championships team by one hundredth of a second in the 50m free. 2023: First World Championships team, bronze in the 50m fly, plus two relay medals. 2024: First world record (Olympic Trials, 100m fly), first Olympic team (four medals in Paris, including 100m fly silver and three relay medals). Virginia coach Todd DeSorbo holds yearly goal-setting sessions with his swimmers (eight former, current or future Cavaliers made this world team). Walsh has said her priority for this summer is to go faster in finals than in semifinals — which she didn't do in the 100m fly at any of the 2023 World Championships, the 2024 Olympic Trials and the Paris Games (where she swam an Olympic record time in the semis). 'That's my Super Bowl,' she told NBC Sports in the spring of semifinals. 'And then at finals I get nervous, or something just doesn't go right. I don't execute the race I wanted.' Walsh, a finance major, took a stress and anxiety management class in Charlottesville. 'I wanted to take away lessons from that to help me balance my life and then also to enjoy my last year (of college), soak up the moments, be present,' she said on 'Kicking it with the Walsh Sisters,' a YouTube show she hosts with older sister Alex, also an Olympic swimming medalist. DeSorbo switched up training following the Olympics, much to his pupils' approval: going from five practices per week in the long-course pool to one, with the vast majority in a 25-yard pool instead. After Christmas, there were no practices in a 50-meter pool until after the NCAA Championships in March. After that, they transitioned to a majority of training in the bigger pool again. In her first meet back in a 50-meter pool, Walsh broke 53 seconds in the 100m free for the first time (fifth-fastest American in history), broke her own American record in the 50m fly (second-fastest woman in history globally) and broke her own world record in the 100m fly in prelims and in the final. 'I think that the way we approached it really helped her,' DeSorbo said of the training changes, 'because there was no pressure. There was no expectation.' Walsh's first individual event at worlds is her trademark: the 100m fly (final on Monday morning in the U.S.). In 2025, no other woman in the world has been within 1.5 seconds of Walsh's latest world record. If she flies away from the field, it could be the start of an unforgettable week. 'Overall, I want to go best times, lower some records,' Walsh said, 'and get some gold.'
The Hill
22-07-2025
- Climate
- The Hill
How ‘corn sweat' can make a hot summer day even worse
(NEXSTAR) — Forget the dog days of summer — it's corn sweat season. Through the end of July, the National Weather Service has warned that a large stretch of the country — from Louisiana to Minnesota and eastward — is expected to experience 'dangerous, prolonged heat' coupled with humid weather. For those in the Midwest and across the Corn Belt, the high humidity can be attributed in part to the plethora of corn (and other crops) growing in the region. As Ellen Bacca, chief meteorologist at Nexstar's WOOD, explains, corn and crops 'sweat' just like humans when they become hot. Unlike humans, plants bring water from their roots and release it into the air in a process known as evapotranspiration. Have this giant, noxious weed in your yard? How to get rid of it — without burning yourself Estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey say that a single acre of corn can release 3,000 to 4,000 gallons of water vapor daily. As Nexstar's WGN previously reported, in Illinois alone, the National Weather Service said a mature corn crop is capable of producing more than 35 billion gallons of water vapor in a day. That would be enough to fill over 52,500 Olympic-size swimming pools. Iowa and other areas known for growing large expanses of corn can frequently be the most humid locations in the country. That was true Tuesday: data from the National Weather Service shows dew points in the upper 70s across Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Only Florida and the southern portions of the Gulf states had higher early afternoon dew points. The corn sweat effect has grown from a hyper-local event to a more expansive situation due to climate change, according to Brian James, chief meteorologist with the Nexstar Weather Center said Tuesday. 'The increased humidity caused by very large corn fields is a phenomenon that has become even more amplified due to climate change,' he explained. 'A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. That means as the summer heat builds and temperatures rise across the Corn Belt, the increased humidity is leading to heat index values above 110 degrees over a much larger area than what used to occur.' The latest temperature outlook from NOAA's Climate Prediction Center shows that, across the Lower 48, only California and parts of Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan and the Northeast are likely to see below-average temperatures during the final week of July. All other parts of the country — especially areas from the southern Plains, across the Gulf Coast and into the southern Ohio Valley — have a higher chance of seeing above-normal temperatures. Any corn sweat that increases humidity will, of course, only last a few more months.
Yahoo
22-07-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Century-old dam under strain as floods increase in US and federal funds dry up
More than 18,000 properties that sit downstream of a series of a century-old Ohio dam are at risk of flooding over the next three decades, according to climate data, as the Trump administration continues to roll back investments that would aid in keeping the waters at bay. In a part of the US that's largely flat, the view from above the Huffman dam in south-west Ohio is rare. From the bike trail atop the dam, the shimmering lights of downtown Dayton appear to the south. Cargo planes from a nearby air force base circle overhead and water from the 66-mile-long Mad River gushes underfoot. But the dam serves a far more pressing purpose: holding back up to 54bn gallons of water – enough to fill 82,000 Olympic-size swimming pools – during flooding events. Nearby, more than 21% of all properties downstream are at risk of flooding over the next three decades, according to First Street, a climate risk data modeling organization. That percentage accounts for 18,596 properties in Dayton. The five massive dry dams and 55 miles of levees west and north of Dayton were built in the aftermath of catastrophic destruction that befell the Ohio city in 1913, when 360 people died and flooding in three rivers that meet in the city center wiped out the downtown area. But today, it and many other communities around the midwest are once again at risk of flooding. 'Our system has experienced 2,170 storage events. The flood in April ranked 12th,' says MaryLynn Lodor, general manager of the Miami Conservancy District, the authority overseeing the regional flood prevention system that includes the Huffman Dam. The flooding early last April saw five to seven inches of rain inundate homes, roads and parks, and caused power outages for thousands of people across hundreds of miles. Extreme precipitation events are happening with increasing regularity at a time when, across a region that's home to the country's two major, high-discharge waterways – the Ohio and Mississippi rivers – decades-old flood prevention infrastructure is falling apart. From Indiana, where authorities in charge of a dam at a youth camp that sees 15,000 visitors annually warned of failure during last April's flooding, to Illinois and Minnesota, reports are appearing with increasing regularity of '100-year' floods threatening the integrity of, and in some cases destroying, dams. Five years ago, the Edenville Dam in central Michigan failed following days of heavy rain, prompting the evacuation of 10,000 people and the failure of another dam downstream. The dam is situated at the confluence of two rivers, and in 2018 its owner temporarily had its license taken away due to fears it couldn't pass enough water at high flood levels. Lawsuits and an expense report of $250m followed the dam failure. Data from Michigan's department of environment, Great Lakes and energy, found that of the state's recorded 2,552 dams, nearly 18% were rated as in 'fair', 'poor' or 'unsatisfactory' condition. Despite this, little change has been enacted in Michigan. 'The reason this is popping up everywhere in the country is because it's a massive ageing infrastructure problem,' says Bryan Burroughs, a member of a now-closed state taskforce that sought to investigate the status of dams across Michigan following the Edenville incident. He says the taskforce's recommendations have largely not been enacted. 'To date, the only ones that have been taken up and addressed to any level are the ones that our state department of environment, Great Lakes and energy are able to oversee themselves. Regulatory changes have not been picked up legislatively,' Burroughs continued. Through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration had made investing in America's ageing infrastructure over the course of many years a priority, with $10bn dedicated to flooding mitigation and drought relief. An additional $3bn was allocated in 2021 through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for dam safety, removal and related upgrades. Since Donald Trump entered the White House in January, the administration has vowed to roll back much of those investments. Hundreds of dam safety and other staffers working at dams in 17 western states have been laid off in recent months. Before the 4 July flood disaster in Texas, the Trump administration had pledged to close the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). With more than 92,000 dams across the country, the Society of Civil Engineers estimates the cost of repairing the country's non-federal dams at $165bn. In Ohio, the Miami Conservancy District has been outspoken in highlighting that the dams it is responsible for are in need of repair – in particular, the upstream walls of two north of the city of Dayton. Levees it manages 'are subject to the costly, federally mandated Fema accreditation process, but there is no adequate funding source.' Last year, the district said it needs $140m to bring the region's dams and levees up to safe levels over the coming decades. Over the past 80 years, the organization has seen a 228% increase in the volume of water its dams store, meaning the structures today must work harder than they did in the past to hold back the water. 'As we're looking at having to make reinvestments, we are looking to try to secure some funding through the state and federal governments,' says Lodor. 'We have not gotten much support and federal dollars or state money to be able to do the system. It's already been invested in by the local communities; it would be very difficult for this to be on the backs of the locals.' Many dams hold back water that's used by fishers and recreators – an issue that's creating tension in many communities. In White Cloud, Michigan, authorities have had to draw down much of the lake water behind a 150-year-old dam due to fears for its structural integrity, angering locals. As in Texas, dozens of youth groups and Christian camps across the midwest use lakes and waterways downstream of ageing lowhead and other dams for programming and outdoor activities. Emails and messages left by the Guardian with the owners of an at-risk dam at a camp in Indiana used by thousands of children every year received no response. While compared with other parts of the US the midwest does not have a lot of dams whose main purpose is for flood control due to geological and topographical reasons, Ohio and much of the wider midwest have seen 'record-setting rain' this year. 'The weather has changed,' says Burroughs. 'What used to be a one-in-100-year flood event might have happened three times in the last 40 years.' Solve the daily Crossword
