We delve into which foods that research shows will become more popular as we adjust to climate change, the discovery of a new planet covered in water, and the effects of Arctic storms on ice levels.
We delve into which foods that research shows will become more popular as we adjust to climate change, the discovery of a new planet covered in water, and the effects of Arctic storms on ice levels.
Food for Climate Change
New Water Planet
Stormchasers
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/food-for-climate-change-new-water-planet-stormchasers
[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today we are gonna talk about which foods will become more popular as we adjust to climate change, the discovery of a new planet covered in water, and the effects of Arctic storms on ice!
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, have you noticed that every year the grass gets more and more brown as our summers get hotter and dryer?
NATE: Oh, yeah definitely.
CALLI: Well soon it won’t just be your grass you have to worry about. As the effects of climate change - like drought, heat waves, and floods - get worse, we will have to change the foods we eat to be more resilient to our warming world!
NATE: What, the food we eat now isn’t good enough to survive a bit of warming?
CALLI: Well, right now, just 13 types of crops provide about 80% of the world’s energy absorption, which means the energy content of the foods we eat - think carbohydrates, proteins and fats. Half of allllllll of our calories we eat as a planet come from just wheat, rice, and corn alone, which is a bit of a gamble because we rely so much on so few types of food. As temperatures get hotter, rainfall becomes less predictable, and extreme weather happens more often, these crops might not be enough to feed us all.
NATE: Is there a single solution? Can we just make…super corn?
CALLI: Not quite, researchers say we need to try and find as many solutions as possible and diversify our food system so that it’s not so dominated by so few crops. This is something that indigenous people have been doing for a long time but, as with many things today, it’s taken a while for us to catch up. We’ll need to breed crops to be more resilient to climate change and study new crops that might be better suited to the new climate. Plus, we’ll just have to eat different foods.
NATE: …what kind of foods?
CALLI: Fear not, they will still need to look good, taste good, and be cost effective. And around the world there are already crops that are more resilient to climate change that are still providing the necessary calories and nutrients. There’s millet that we can use to make flour and pasta that’s been around for about 10,000 years! It’s already a staple crop in Asia and Africa. It needs less water and thrives in dry climates, making it more durable than wheat, corn, and rice. On top of that, you can make beer with it! Which I know will make some of our listeners happy.
NATE: Oh I’ve heard of Millet before. That’s not too big of a change, do you have anything more…out there?
CALLI: How about Bambara Groundnut? It's packed with fiber and minerals. It's a legume, like a peanut, that comes from sub-saharan Africa, so it's very drought tolerant. Plus, you can make milk out of it, much like how we make almond milk!
NATE: I’ll have my latte with bambara milk please.
CALLI: Ha, yes exactly! For a lot of these foods though we do need to learn from the indigenous people who have been cultivating them throughout history. They have a lot of knowledge about how to process certain types of food and make them tasty, as well as insight into how these foods have been used in the past. For example, other great options are enset and cassava. Enset is a starchy stem from Ethiopia that is great at dealing with drought and can be harvested year round. Cassava is a South American root that can handle salt, drought, and extreme temperatures! For both of these crops we need to understand best practices for cultivation from the people who’ve eaten them for hundreds of years.
NATE: Is there anything that I already eat that will survive climate change well?
CALLI: Totally! Do you like mussels? They are a great option because they have a ton of protein and Omega-3 fatty acids. Same with oysters and clams. These types of shellfish COULD make up 40% of our seafood by 2050. And if we farm them we can make them more affordable than they are right now.
NATE: Sounds like a great solution!
CALLI: It does, but it is pretty dependent on how our ocean pollution levels change moving forward. If they stay steady, these can work very well for us BUT if ocean acidification rises, it can wreak havoc on their hard shells.
NATE: Just another reason to keep our oceans clean!
CALLI: Exactly. There’s another food you can find on some shelves today that can become more popular as we adjust to the effects of climate change: kelp! Kelp is already a big food product in Asia, and it’s growing in the west as well. While it’s packed with vitamins, it also isolates carbon which is not only great for the atmosphere, but it can lower the acidification of the ocean which makes it a perfect crop to grow alongside mussels and other shellfish! For this to work, we will need to create these farms intentionally so that these diverse crops can flourish and we don’t need to pull what’s in the ocean right now.
NATE: Yes, balance is always key. It can be so hard to think about the effects of climate change but I’m glad the work is already being done to figure out how to sustainably keep everyone fed as the planet grows hotter.
CALLI: Absolutely, and, as I mentioned, I’m happy that we are learning from indigenous traditions to diversify our flora and hopefully foster a stronger connection to the earth to create more sustainable food systems.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Calli, do you remember that scene in the Matthew McConaughey movie Interstellar where he splashes across that water-covered planet?
CALLI: You know how much of a McConaissance fan I am, so of course I remember that.
NATE: Well researchers may have found the first, real, confirmed ocean exoplanet that has its surface completely covered in water!
CALLI: Oh that is so neat! But what exactly is an exoplanet?
NATE: Exoplanets, or extrasolar planets, are planets that exist beyond our solar system! They usually orbit stars like our sun. NASA even has a telescope, TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, that orbits the earth searching the sky for star systems that might have planets!
CALLI: And they found one?
NATE: They’ve found many! But this new discovery, TOI-1452 b is super exciting because it is a planet very similar to earth, and researchers say it is completely covered by a thick ocean!
CALLI: What! That’s so cool! Can we go to it? Are we going to see astronauts swimming on another planet in our lifetime!
NATE: It’s a touch too far away to visit - a mere 100 lightyears from Earth. It’s orbiting a binary star system, which means that there are two sun-like stars at the center. Have you heard of the constellation Draco?
CALLI: I can’t say I have…
NATE: Well it’s one of the biggest constellations in the Northern Hemisphere. Two of the stars that are in the constellation are actually those two suns that this new planet orbits around. These stars aren’t as bright as our sun, but TOI-1452 b’s distance from them means it would be the perfect temperature to keep water a liquid, rather than ice or gas.
CALLI: If it’s so far away from Earth, how do we know so much about it?
NATE: Well once TESS found it, researchers at the University of Montreal aimed their own telescope with a high resolution camera at the star system. Their telescope and camera is great at looking at planets in infrared, and analyzing and cleaning the data to get useful information. It’s called SPIRou which is specifically designed to find and measure exoplanets way beyond our solar system!
CALLI: That’s awesome! So what else did SPIRou tell us about the planet?
NATE: Well, it’s probably rocky like Earth, but about 70% bigger. It’s a lot less dense than what was expected which tipped the researchers off that it’s covered in deep water. Earth is about 70% covered by water but it only makes up 1% of our planet’s mass. Because TOI-1452 b is so much bigger than Earth and is covered in rock and metal, it was expected that its mass would also be bigger but researchers believe that up to 30% of its mass comes from its ocean.
CALLI: No wonder everyone is so excited! That is fascinating. But now you have me hooked, Nate, I want to learn as much about this place as I can!
NATE: Well you’re not alone, researchers do too! Thankfully this discovery coincides beautifully with the recent success of the James Webb Space Telescope that’s orbiting Earth beyond the moon. The planet is close enough that we hope to be able to use Webb to study its atmosphere. Researchers are working to point the telescope at the planet as soon as they can, and thankfully its location in the sky means we can observe it, from space or earth, all year round!
CALLI: While it might not happen in our lifetimes, I am still thrilled about the idea of people swimming on different planets.
NATE: Well that dream sounds a lot more reasonable than it did even a few weeks ago!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Nate, what do you think of storm chasers?
NATE: Oh they’re so cool! I would love to do that someday, get in a car and hunt down a tornado!? That sounds fun and dangerous.
CALLI: Oh absolutely, but what about doing it in the arctic circle? Because there’s a group called Thin Ice Campaign that’s doing just that. The Thin Ice Campaign uses dozens of weather balloons and they fly airplanes above Arctic storms to collect data. And Nate, these are not your average tornados, these are storms that can become over 3,000 MILES across!
NATE: Whoa, 3,000 miles? That’s huge! I guess my question is… why even do that? It sounds so dangerous.
CALLI: It is but better predictions of storm patterns will help the fishing industry stay safe, protect coastal communities, and tell commercial and travel vessels when to stay in port and when to head out in the waters. Plus, it's helping us understand how the arctic ice is disappearing. Arctic storms are responsible for 40% of our yearly ice loss, and that percentage is growing. Individual storms have destroyed more than 300,000 square miles of ice. Better models are crucial for understanding how the ice melts, and helping us learn if there is anything we can do to slow it down!
NATE: That makes sense. So tell me how these massive storms form?
CALLI: They form a few different ways. Sometimes storms that form in lower latitudes make their way up toward the arctic, and kind of get stuck there. But other times the temperature differences between the ocean and ice, or between land and the ocean can cause air to start swirling. When that swirling air meets polar vortexes, which is the air that spins 3-5 miles above the water, the storms can form and grow.
NATE: Is it fair to compare it to a tropical storm?
CALLI: Even though the arctic cyclones can get much bigger than a tropical storm, they’re not actually as powerful. That said, they can form large arctic waves that make it really hard for fishing vessels in the area, and storm surges can crash against coastal villages. Some have even had to abandon their towns! The rough waters can be dangerous for cargo and cruise ships that take advantage of the pathways that usually form in the arctic as ice melts in the summer.
NATE: Well can’t we predict the weather? Meteorologists have to have a good sense of when these storms will form, right?
CALLI: That’s the thing, it’s really hard to predict these storms but also super important to do so. We don’t have much data and we only have a few weather stations to monitor them. Plus, predicting the cyclones is really tough because the clouds in the storm have both liquid and frozen water inside them.
NATE: I can see that being incredibly difficult for those weather balloons and planes as well. If the clouds are made of both water and ice, how does that even work?
CALLI: So, they release the weather balloons and fly the plane above the storm as I mentioned. Then, simultaneously, another airplane flies super low, just 50-100 feet above the ocean and the ice. Both of these planes take measurements of clouds, ice, water, and air before landing in Svalbard, Norway, which is the world’s northernmost inhabited area. Then the data from all three methods is compiled!
NATE: That sounds wild, I would not do that. I guess if the state of our Arctic ice is at risk, you’ve got to be a passionate conservationist to handle all of that.
CALLI: Absolutely. But they are doing great work because these storms really do play a big role in the fate of Arctic ice. Some cloud cover can preserve the ice, but more often than not, winds push the edge of the ice into warmer water where it can break apart and melt more quickly. Researchers hope that collecting this data will help them better understand how these storms form, and how different factors affect the speed of the ice melt.
NATE: Oh wow, I guess for a storm system this complicated, you need as much information as you can get! So will this help those people fishing and living in the area?
CALLI: Absolutely.
NATE: Well I wouldn't want to do it, but I’m glad those storm chasers are out there getting the data we need!
CALLI: You and me both! In the arctic circle, science takes a sense of adventure, and I’m glad they have it!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up.
CALLI: As the climate changes and warms, our global food system will need to change with it. Thankfully researchers have already identified some crops and foods more resilient to a harsher, hotter, drier world.
NATE: Researchers have discovered a new exoplanet, and it looks a lot like earth. TOI 1452 b orbits two stars and is likely covered with a deep ocean of water.
CALLI: Summer storms melt thousands of square miles of ice in the arctic each year. Researchers in the Thin Ice Campaign are taking harrowing flights above, and below these storms, to collect data and better understand the storms and how they’re affecting arctic ice.