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.

A Bigger Hurricane Year for the East Coast?

—By Julia Whitty

| Fri Jun. 1, 2012 12:51 PM PDT

Tropical Storm Beryl, 27 May 2012: NASA

Tropical Storms Alberto and Beryl have been born, lived, and died well before today's official start of the Atlantic hurricane season. Only twice before (1887 and 1908) since reliable record-keeping began in 1850 have two named storms form so early in the year. So why was this season an exception, and what might that bode for the upcoming season? According to Jeff Masters at Wunderblog:

Between the subtropical jet [stream] to the south and the polar jet to the north, a "hole" in the wind shear pattern formed during May off the Southeast US coast, and this is where both Alberto and Beryl were able to form. Their formation was aided by the fact ocean temperatures off the U.S. East coast are quite warm—about 1-2°C [1.8-3.6°F] above average. A wind shear "hole" is predicted to periodically open up during the next two weeks off the Southeast US coast, making that region the most likely area of formation for any first-half-of-June tropical storms.

Many Atlantic storms are fueled by sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Atlantic between Africa and Central America, between 10-20°N latitude. So far this year that region has seen SSTs only 0.35°C [0.7°F] above average in May—roughly the third coolest since the hurricane period got active again in 1995. This may mean a later start to the formation of storms in that region.

But there's a hotspot in SSTs off the East Coast. Jeff Masters writes:

An interesting feature of this month's SST departure from average image is the large area of record-warm ocean temperatures off the mid-Atlantic and New England coasts, from North Carolina to Massachusetts. Ocean temperatures are 3-5°C (5-9°F) above average in this region. This makes waters of much above-average warmth likely to be present during the peak part of hurricane season, increasing the chances for a strong hurricane to affect the mid-Atlantic and New England coast.

Sea surface temperatures on 1 June 2012, in degrees C: NOAA Here's what various forecast models are predicting for the 2012 Atlantic season (you can read more about the differences in these models at Wunderblog):

Colorado State University's Tropical Meteorology Project just revised their forecast upward to 13 named storms, 5 hurricanes, and 2 intense hurricanes, a slightly-below-average season.
Florida State University's Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies predicts 10 to 16 named storms and 5 to 9 hurricanes, with a mid-range forecast of 13 named storms and 7 hurricanes (they've been the most accurate forecasters in the past three years).
Penn State forecasts a near-average hurricane season of 11 named storms, plus or minus 3.3 storms.
The UK Met Office forecasts a slightly below-average hurricane season with 10 named storms.
The British forecasting firm Tropical Storm Risk calls for 12.7 named storms, 5.7 hurricanes, and 2.7 intense hurricanes.
NOAA predicts an average hurricane season of 12 named storms, 6 hurricanes, and 2 major hurricanes.

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Japan Quake and Tsunami Rattled Upper Atmosphere

—By Julia Whitty

| Wed May. 30, 2012 1:04 PM PDT

Travel-time plots of observed ionospheric perturbations and modeled ocean tsunami within 1,500 km (932 miles) of earthquake's epicenter NASA/JPL-CaltechThe 9.0 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeastern Japan in March 2011 did more than rattle the ground and upheave the ocean. Shock waves also rippled all the way up through the ionosphere—the upper atmosphere stretching ~50-500 miles above Earth's surface.

That motion was observed in the signals between GPS satellites and a dense network of ground receivers around Japan, reports NASA. The video explains these observations, never before seen in so much detail for a quake and tsunami of this size.

Record Early Start to Hurricane Season

—By Julia Whitty

| Fri May. 25, 2012 12:00 PM PDT

Hurricane Bud at 1345 Zulu on 25 May 2012: NOAA Last night Hurricane Bud off Mexico's west coast peaked at Category 3 strength, with 115 mile-per-hour winds. That makes it the earliest Category 3 hurricane on record this early in the Eastern Pacific. As Jeff Masters writes at Wunderblog:

Hurricanes are uncommon in the Eastern Pacific in May; there have been just twelve since record keeping began in 1949—an average of one May hurricane every five years. If Bud ends up making landfall in Mexico as a hurricane, it would be only the second Eastern Pacific May hurricane on record to hit Mexico.

Sea surface temperatures on 24 May 2012, in degrees Celsius: NOAA Masters also notes that sea surface temperatures (SSTs) this year in the Pacific where Aletta and Bud formed are slightly above average... though he concludes that large-scale atmospheric patterns are the more likely cause of this year's exceptionally early start to hurricane season in the Eastern Pacific.

Near-average SSTs are one factor NOAA is citing in its prediction for a near normal hurricane season on the Atlantic side this year—with 9 to 15 named storms, 4 to 8 hurricanes, 1 to 3 major hurricanes, and an Accumulated Cyclone Energy for the season ranging from 65 to 140 percent of the median.

94L at 1915 Zulu on 25 May 2012: NASA | NOAA | GOES Project Science At the moment the National Hurricane Center is following a system called Invest 94L 275 miles southeast of the Carolinas. There's currently an 80 percent chance this system will develop into a tropical or subtropical cyclone in the next 48 hours and turn west into the US coast over the weekend.

The good news is that 94L, which may develop into Beryl, will likely bring relief to the severe drought underway in the US Southeast.

New Climate Threat to Critically Endangered Leatherback Sea Turtles

—By Julia Whitty

| Thu May. 24, 2012 12:12 PM PDT

Leatherback sea turtle hatchling: Florida Fish and Wildlife via FlickrA new paper in PLoS ONE reports that critically endangered leatherback sea turtles nesting in Costa Rica—a stronghold of the surviving population—are severely affected by the warmer and drier climate that accompanies El Niño cycles.

Unfortunately, a warmer and drier climate is also exactly what's forecast for Costa Rica in a warming world in the coming century, according to IPCC projections... a whopping 3°C (5.4°F) warmer and 25 percent drier on the Pacific coast.

As the authors note, leatherback turtles are already critically in danger of extinction from egg poaching and bycatch in fisheries. Now climate change threatens them further. From the paper:

Egg-burying reptiles need relatively stable temperature and humidity in the substrate surrounding their eggs for successful development and hatchling emergence. Here we show that egg and hatchling mortality of leatherback turtles (Dermochelys coriacea) in northwest Costa Rica were affected by climatic variability (precipitation and air temperature) driven by the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Drier and warmer conditions associated with El Niño increased egg and hatchling mortality... Using projections from an ensemble of global climate models contributed to the IPCC report, we project that egg and hatchling survival will rapidly decline in the region over the next 100 years by ~50–60%, due to warming and drying in northwestern Costa Rica, threatening the survival of leatherback turtles. Warming and drying trends may also threaten the survival of sea turtles in other areas affected by similar climate changes.

Hatching success and emergence rate projections of leatherback nests in 100 years of climate change: Pilar Santidrián Tomillo, et al. PLoS ONE. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0037602

In the graphs above you can see the authors' projections of both hatching success (the percentage of eggs within a clutch that develop completely) and emergence rate (the percentage of hatchlings that successfully emerge from the nest within two nights of the initial emergence event). From the paper:

Our model projected that both hatching success and emergence rate would significantly decrease between years 2001 and 2100 due to a warming and drying of the area encompassing northwest Costa Rica. Of the 17 IPCC models used here, 13 of them projected a decrease in precipitation while all models projected an increase in air temperature. Our projections indicated that hatching success would decrease from a 10-year moving average ~0.42 to ~0.18 from the beginning to the end of the 21st century, and emergence rate from ~0.76 to ~0.29.

Leatherback sea turtle hatchling: Ken Clifton | algaedoc via Wikimedia Commons

As the IUCN Red List notes, the decline in nesting of leatherback turtles has been far greater than 80 percent in most Pacific populations, the species' major stronghold. Global adult female populations have fallen by more than 70 percent in less than one turtle generation. Current annual nesting mortality for females is estimated at ~30 percent.

That means adult females stand a nearly one-in-three chance of dying every year.

Add to that the increasing rates of nesting failure in a warming world and you get the fast-track to extinction for a species that's survived 110 million years of pre-human challenges.

The paper:

Santidrián Tomillo P, Saba VS, Blanco GS, Stock CA, Paladino FV, et al. (2012) Climate Driven Egg and Hatchling Mortality Threatens Survival of Eastern Pacific Leatherback Turtles. PLoS ONE 7(5): e37602. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0037602

The Endangered Species Act Really Works

—By Julia Whitty

| Fri May. 18, 2012 10:36 AM PDT

Gray wolves were hunted to near extinction in the western US. By 1973 none remained in the wild. Listed as endangered in 1967, they recolonized the Rocky Mountains from Canada. Protected, they grew to 1,679 wolves by 2009, delisted in 2011: Martin Mecnarowski via Wikimedia Commons

Just in time for Endangered Species Day the Center for Biological Diversity analyzed 110 species protected under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) and found that 90 percent are on track to meet recovery goals set by federal scientists, with some far exceeding expectations. From the report:

On average, species recovered in 25 years, while their recovery plan predicted 23 years — a 91 percent timeliness accomplishment.

Critics of the Endangered Species Act contend it is a failure because only 1 percent of the species under its protection have recovered and been delisted... To objectively test whether the Endangered Species Act is recovering species at a sufficient rate, we compared the actual recovery rate of 110 species with the projected recovery rate in their federal recovery plans. The species range over all 50 states, include all major taxonomic groups, and have a diversity of listing lengths.We found that the Endangered Species Act has a remarkably successful recovery rate: 90 percent of species are recovering at the rate specified by their federal recovery plan.

We confirmed the conclusion of scientists and auditors who assert that the great majority of species have not been listed long enough to warrant an expectation of recovery: 80 percent of species have not yet reached their expected recovery year. On average, these species have been listed for just 32 years, while their recovery plans required 46 years of listing.

Meet a few of the success stories:

Bighorn sheep: Philipp Haupt via Wikimedia CommonsThe Peninsular bighorn sheep declined to near extinction because of housing developments, agriculture, collisions with cars, predation by mountain lions and diseases contracted from domestic sheep. Sheep populations plummeted from 971 in 1971, to 276 in 1996, but since being listed as endangered in 1998, the number of bighorns has increased to 981 as of 2010.

Green sea turtle: Brocken Inaglory via Wikimedia CommonsGreen sea turtles in the Pacific are threatened by habitat loss, egg collection, hunting, beach development, bycatch mortality in commercial fisheries, and sea level rise due to global warming. In Hawaii, more than 90 percent of nesting occurs at French Frigate Shoals. Since being listed as endangered in 1978, the number females nesting there increased from 105 to 808 in 2011.

Piping plover: Mdf via Wikimedia Commons

Atlantic piping plover populations declined due to 19th-century hunting and the millinery trade. After these threats were eliminated, its numbers increased, but began declining after 1950 due to beach development and predation by native and introduced predators. It was listed on the ESA in 1985, and gained habitat protection, control of recreationists on beaches, and predators, which allowed its population in the US to increase from 550 pairs in 1986 to 1,550 in 2011. The US population reached its overall recovery goal in three of the past five years, but some of its subpopulations haven't reached recovery yet. Its associated Canadian population has grown little.

From the report:

The corollary to claiming the Endangered Species Act is 1 percent successful because only 1 percent of species has been delisted is that the other 99 percent are failures. In fact, many still endangered species have increased dramatically since being placed on the list. Among them are the California least tern (2,819 percent increase in nesting pairs), San Miguel island fox (3,830 percent increase in wild foxes), black-footed ferret (8,280 percent increase in the fall population), Atlantic green sea turtle (2,206 percent increase in nesting females on Florida beaches) and El Segundo blue butterfly (22,312 percent increase in butterflies).

"Saving species from the brink of extinction—and bringing them back to a point where they're going to survive into the future—can't happen overnight," says lead author Kieran Suckling. "Calling the Act at failure at this point is like throwing away a 10-day prescription of antibiotics on the third day and saying they don't work. It just makes no sense."

You can read the entire report and meet some of the other species being aided by the ESA here.