Julia Whitty

Environmental Correspondent

Julia is an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction (Deep Blue Home, The Fragile Edge, A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga), and a former documentary filmmaker. She also blogs at Deep Blue Home.

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Julia is a writer and former documentary filmmaker and the author of The Fragile Edge: Diving & Other Adventures in the South Pacific, winner of a PEN USA Literary Award, the John Burroughs Medal, the Kiriyama Prize, the Northern California Books Awards, and finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Deep Blue Home: An Intimate Ecology of Our Wild Ocean. Her short story collection A Tortoise for the Queen of Tonga won an O. Henry and was a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Award. She also blogs at Deep Blue Home.

Even If It Gets Wacky Cold, 2012 Will Still Set Record Heat

—By Julia Whitty

| Mon Sep. 10, 2012 2:47 PM PDT

Crazy climate events, August 2012: NOAA | National Climate Data Center

The year so far—January to August—now ranks as the warmest on record in the US, says NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.

The national temperature of 58.7°F was an insane 4.0°F above the 20th century average, and 1.0°F above the previous record warm of 2006.
Thirty-three states were record warm Jan-Aug this year and an additional 12 states were top ten warm. Only Washington state had temperatures near average for the period.
January-August 2012 was also the 14th driest period on record for the lower 48 states with a precipitation total 1.90 inches below the average of 20.20 inches.
Drier-than-average conditions stretched across the country. Ten states had year-to-date precip totals among their ten driest.

The US Climate Extremes Index (USCEI) value for January-August was a record large 47 percent: more than twice the average value. Which beat the previous record of 46 percent set only last year. Extremes in warm daytime temperatures and warm nighttime temperatures contributed to the record high USCEI value.

As Wunderblog's Jeff Masters writes:

Temperatures this year in the US have been so far above the previous record... that even if the remainder of 2012 ranks historically in the coldest one-third of September-Decembers on record, 2012 will beat out 1998 for the warmest year in history. Reliable weather records for the US go back to 1895.

To put this in a global perspective, check out Kate Sheppard's posted video: The Warming World in Less Than 30 Seconds.

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Jobs for Military Vets to Rebuild Fisheries

—By Julia Whitty

| Thu Sep. 6, 2012 4:10 PM PDT

Coho salmon juveniles: John McMillan | NOAA via Flickr

NOAA announced yesterday a plan to provide jobs and training for military vets to restore habitat and monitor fisheries in northern California. The program will be jointly run with the California Conservation Corps and and the California Department of Fish and Game.

Veterans will start the year-long job by taking courses in how to collect data. In October they'll begin monitoring river restoration sites designed to increase spawning and rearing habitat for populations of endangered coho salmon in Humboldt, Del Norte, and Mendocino counties. The restored streams should help Chinook and steelhead trout as well. Vets will also get training and experience in firefighting.

"This is a win-win for everyone," said Eric Schwaab, NOAA's assistant administrator for fisheries. "Military veterans have tremendous skills to offer, and by helping to restore fish habitats they will be supporting the important role of commercial and recreational fishing in the economy. Restoration jobs pay dividends twice, first because they put people to work immediately, and then because restoration benefits our fisheries, tourism, and coastal communities for years to come."

Sounds like a fun outdoor job. The program combines President Obama's Veterans Job Corps Initiative and America's Great Outdoors.

Interested veterans can call Tina Ratcliff at the California Conservation Corps at 916-341-3123, or email tina.ratcliff@ccc.ca.gov. Training begins Monday 17 September.

5 Crazy Ideas to Save Coral Reefs

—By Julia Whitty

| Thu Aug. 30, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Coral reef image: Nick Hobgood via Wikimedia Commons. Beach umbrella image: Loren Sztajer via Flickr

How are we going to save coral reefs in a world where carbon dioxide is changing the temperature and chemistry of the ocean at a rate unprecedented in 300 million years?

"We urge that the marine science and management communities actively solicit and evaluate all potential marine management strategies, including unconventional ones."

Three marine ecologists have written a persuasive paper in Nature Climate Change arguing that the time has come to seriously consider rolling up our sleeves and doing something.

"It's unwise to assume we will be able to stabilize atmospheric CO₂ at levels necessary to reduce or prevent ongoing damage to marine ecosystems," says coauthor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. "In lieu of dealing with the core problem—increasing emissions of greenhouse gases—these techniques and approaches could ultimately represent the last resort. I hope we don't end up in the position but we must at least be prepared."

Here are a few suggestions worthy of exploration, suggest the authors, even if only on a small scale:

Deploying buoyant shade cloth (it's been tried on the Great Barrier Reef) to protect corals from heat stress that leads to bleaching and death
Using electrical current to stimulate coral growth and mitigate bleaching
Trying selective breeding or genetic engineering to help species develop biological resistance and adaptation
Maintaining or managing ocean chemistry by adding base minerals such as carbonates and silicates to neutralize acidity and help marine creatures make their shells/skeletons
Convert CO₂ from land-based waste into dissolved bicarbonates to add to the ocean for carbon sequestration and reduced ocean acidity

Coral image credit: Nick Hobgood via Wikimedia Commons. Lifesaver image credit: dharma communications via Flickr.

Why the urgency?

Well, while some species may be able to adapt to change by migrating deeper into the ocean or further from the equator, it's not going to be easy. For instance, the Great Barrier Reef would have to migrate south at the rate of nearly 10 miles (15 kilometers) a year to keep pace with the predicted increases in ocean temperatures.

"The magnitude and rapidity of these changes is likely to surpass the ability of numerous marine species to adapt and survive," Hoegh-Guldberg says.

The open-access paper:

Greg H. Rau, Elizabeth L. McLeod & Ove Hoegh-Guldberg. The need for new ocean conservation strategies in a high-carbon dioxide world. Nature Climate Change. 2012. doi:10.1038/nclimate1555

Arctic Ice Shatters Melt Record

—By Julia Whitty

| Mon Aug. 27, 2012 1:56 PM PDT

Arctic sea ice on August 26, the day the sea ice dipped to its smallest extent ever recorded in more than three decades of satellite measurements Scientific Visualization Studio, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

The Arctic sea ice extent yesterday fell below its previous record low and is currently losing frozen sea at the rate of about 29,000 square miles (roughly 75,000 square kilometers) a day. That's equivalent to an area the size of South Carolina every 24 hours.

Here's what happened:

On August 26 sea ice extent fell to 1.58 million square miles (4.10 million square kilometers).
That's 27,000 square miles (70,000 square kilometers) below the previous record set on September 18, 2007.
The 2007 record low ice extent was 1.61 million square miles (4.17 million square kilometers).

Note that this year's record low was set more than three weeks earlier than the 2007 record. And summer isn't over yet. There's more melting to come.

Arctic sea ice extent as of August 26, along with daily ice extent data for 2007, the previous record low year, and 1980, the record high year: National Snow and Ice Data Center courtesy Rutgers University Snow Lab.

What's alarming is that the 2007 record was set during a year of near-perfect conditions for melting. This year didn't have anything like perfect conditions. But even that couldn't stop the freight train running down those Arctic tracks.

According to National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) Director Mark Serreze: "The ice is so thin and weak now, it doesn't matter how the winds blow."

The six lowest ice extents in the satellite record have occurred in the last six years, from 2007 to 2012.

This trend is an indication that the Arctic sea ice cover is fundamentally changing, said NSIDC scientist Walt Meier. "The Arctic used to be dominated by multiyear ice, or ice that stayed around for several years. Now it's becoming more of a seasonal ice cover and large areas are now prone to melting out in summer."

Scattered ice floes seen from the bridge of US Coast Guard icebreaker Healy on August 20, northwest of Barrow, Alaska: US Coast GuardThe photo above shows the view from the US Coast Guard icebreaker Healy, a science research ship that runs north looking for ice. They've been having problems finding it the last few summers.

BTW, I'm headed out aboard Healy for their last Arctic run of the year in October. I'll let you know what I see up there. And what that might mean for the people and wildlife of the Arctic. Not to mention all the rest of us who've kind of gotten used to the effects of its frozenness on the planet.

America Hit With Record Devastation From Wildfires

—By Julia Whitty

| Tue Aug. 21, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Wildfire smoke: Dan Pearce via FlickrThe National Interagency Fire Center reports that 2012 just broke the record for most acreage burned by wildfires as of this date (see chart below). The previous record was set in 2006, another mega-drought year.

Year-to-date statistics for acreage burned by wildfires National Interagency Fire Center

That's nearly 7 million acres—or 10,893 square miles—that have burned so far this record hot and dry year. Currently 39 large fires and fire complexes are actively burning 1,401,968 acres.

Night view of western wildfires, August 17 NASA image by Jesse Allen, using Suomi NPP VIIRS dataIn Northern California, where I live, fire bloomed with August's dry lightning strikes. Since even the biggest lightning-sparked fire starts out as something small, maybe just a single smoldering tree, sometimes someone finds that tree in time.

Jeremy Couso at SusanvilleStuff.com—listening in on the late night fire scanner—learned how one such fire was thwarted by a lone man in the dark last weekend:

Then came the report of a lightning fire burning in rugged terrain southeast of Eagle Lake. The fire had been spotted from the summit, but at night no aircraft could be used for reconnaissance and there were no direct roads into the forested area. So in the dark, with a flashlight and a radio, this one guy went off hiking into the woods to find a fire. We all sat listening to the radio and wondered out loud—what do they call him? Is there actually a name for this job? Is he a 'smoke-hiker' or 'fire-walker'?

All we knew for sure is that in the dark of the night this guy had set off on his own through some of the most intimidating wilderness in the county searching for a fire, walking through woods that aren't easy-going in the daytime, in conditions where smoke filled the air, and made visibility almost zero... [A]fter two hours of hiking in the dark smoky night through road-less forest, our hero found it… a single pine tree burning in heavy undergrowth which in itself was on fire in every direction for 50 to 100 yards... Our 'smoke-walker' then began the almost 1-hour trek back out from the fire to meet the crew, turned around and guided them back to the fire as quickly as possible.

Fire and smoke map for August 20. Red dots = active fires. White = smoke. (Click for larger live version.) NOAA | OSDPD

Wildfires have big costs. So far in Utah this year there have been more than 1,000 wildfires that have cost over $50 million to fight. The Chips Fire in Northern California—at just shy of than 50,000 acres—has a running tab of over $17 million as of six days ago and it's still going strong.

Wildfires also have intimate costs. Like the "fire-walker's" solo journey into the night. And tragic costs. Like the 20-year-old firefighter on the Steep Corner Fire in Idaho who died when a tree fell on her on August 12. Or the inmate-firefighter who died fighting the Buck Fire in Southern California on Sunday.

Plus the global costs. As Jeff Masters writes, a recent study suggests that while 8 percent of Earth should see decreases in fire activity over the next 30 years of global warming, 38 percent should see increases.

And then there are the personal costs. In my case, newly diagnosed with asthma, that means learning to live with canaries—I mean, bronchi—in my chest, letting me know with crazy sensitivity just how much particulate is in my little portion of the atmosphere. Suddenly fire and smoke maps like the one above are interactive in a whole new way.

This article has been updated.