Learn about why a predicted increase in phytoplankton is good news for our environment; how researchers can detect evidence of climate change from just one day of global weather conditions; and how Pablo Escobar's hippos became an invasive species in Colombia.
Learn about why a predicted increase in phytoplankton is good news for our environment; how researchers can detect evidence of climate change from just one day of global weather conditions; and how Pablo Escobar's hippos became an invasive species in Colombia.
Oceanographers Predict an Increase in Phytoplankton by Andrea Michelson
The Signal of Human-Caused Climate Change Has Emerged in Everyday Weather by Grant Currin
Pablo Escobar's Hippos Have Become an Invasive Species in Colombia by Grant Currin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/pablo-escobars-hippos-overtaking-colombia-more-phytoplankton-is-good-for-the-planet-and-seeing-climate-change-in-daily-weather
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, we’ve got some good news and some bad news when it comes to our planet. First, you’ll learn about why a predicted increase in phytoplankton is really good for our environment; then, you’ll learn about how researchers can now detect evidence of climate change from just one day of global weather conditions. We’ll wrap up with the incredible story of how Pablo Escobar's hippos have become an invasive species in Colombia.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
You probably don’t spend much time thinking about phytoplankton, but they’re incredibly important to our planet. The microscopic, single-celled organisms form the base of almost every ocean food web. And get this: they produce about half of the oxygen in the atmosphere! Their survival is really important, so environmental scientists have been worried about how phytoplankton might be affected by climate change. Fortunately, researchers at the University of California, Irvine recently discovered that phytoplankton may actually thrive in warming waters.
You can think of phytoplankton as nutrient recyclers, and a lot of their recycling depends on the circulation of ocean water. Phytoplankton live in the upper layer of the ocean, where they use sunlight to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen through photosynthesis. They also consume nitrates, phosphates, and sulfur, which typically make it to the upper layer when water circulates. But when oceans heat up, the warm upper layer and the cold lower layer don’t mix as easily. And for plankton, that means fewer nutrients — or at least that’s what scientists thought until now.
Scientists generally measure plankton populations by the amount of chlorophyll in the water. That green pigment is necessary for photosynthesis, so it seems safe to assume phytoplankton are filled with the stuff. But it turns out that plankton living at warmer latitudes only maintain a small amount of chlorophyll. There’s so much sunlight in these regions that the plankton just need a few molecules of the green stuff to make photosynthesis happen. With this in mind, the UC Irvine team took a new plankton census. They found huge amounts of an even tinier creature called picophytoplankton in tropical oceans. And when they created a new model that took these little guys into account, it predicted that there would be a 10 to 20 percent increase in plankton biomass by the year 2100.
This surprising increase shows that plankton are able to adapt to less circulation in warmer oceans. One theory is that dead plankton might stay at the top of the ocean for longer rather than sinking to the bottom. It’s possible that living plankton are upcycling their dead friends for nutrients, which is kind of … sweet when you think about it. Whatever the reason may be, we’re glad to hear that plankton won’t completely die out as the oceans warm. The whole planet is going to need them more than ever.
As climate scientists are probably tired of explaining, weather and climate are different things. Right? We even did a whole segment on the difference between the two on an episode of Curiosity Daily last February. And weather and climate ARE different. But as the amount of carbon in the atmosphere continues to climb, that distinction is becoming a little bit murky. According to a recent study, researchers can now detect evidence of climate change from just one day of global weather conditions.
We usually talk about climate change in terms of the average global temperature. That basically comes down to all the energy we get from the sun in a year minus the energy Earth radiates back into space. Scientists analyzing annual changes have seen the average global temperature rise by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the Industrial Revolution, but they had been very careful to make the distinction between that long-term trend and whatever the weather was on any particular day.
For the first time, researchers have detected the effect of climate change on daily weather. They can see evidence of climate change on the global weather pattern for any day since the spring of 2012.
Here’s how it works. Local weather conditions are affected by a ton of variables, like atmospheric pressure, cloud cover, and high-altitude wind patterns. A surprise cold front can cause local temperatures to plummet by 30 degrees! Since climate change is relatively subtle compared to such extreme variations in weather, it’s very hard to see the effects of climate change in local weather data. But when you look at daily weather data for the entire planet, local variations virtually disappear. What these researchers have done is compare the expected natural variations of temperature and humidity across the world with what’s actually observed. There’s a big difference, and they found that it’s explained by the effects of climate change.
But that still doesn’t mean a cold day in Chicago means global warming isn’t a thing. Again, this is daily weather on a global scale. As one of the co-authors told the Washington Post, quote, “Weather is climate change if you look over the whole globe,” end quote.
What’s behind the change? For one, scientists are getting better at measuring and analyzing weather and climate data. The researchers here used cutting-edge machine learning techniques to study huge, complicated datasets. But another thing that helped? Stronger signals in the data. Climate change becomes easier to spot as it becomes more extreme. Here’s hoping we can reverse that trend.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode is sponsored by Clear.
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Pablo Escobar's hippos have become an invasive species in Colombia (Ashley)
This next sentence might break your brain: Pablo Escobar’s hippos are pooping too much.
Ok, ok, I’ll explain. In the 1980s, the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar became South America’s most notorious zookeeper when he brought rhinos, giraffes, zebras, and hippos to his family’s ranch in Colombia. When his empire collapsed in the 90s, most of the animals were sent to zoos across the region — except for the four resident hippos. Those hippos made more hippos, and now there are 80 of them. New research says they’re having a big impact on the environment — and it stinks.
The researchers spent two years comparing water quality in lakes with hippos and lakes where hippos haven’t moved in...at least not yet. They looked at water chemistry and took surveys of bacteria, insects, and crustaceans.
It turns out that hippos introduce a lot of...nutrients into their new environments.
[CODY: Nutrients?
ASHLEY: ...Poop. Like I said, there is SO much poop.]
See, hippos spend their nights on land, roaming around and eating. They spend their days cooling off in lakes, where they relieve themselves. Constantly. Basically, they collect nutrients and energy from the land, break it down, and deposit it into the lake. All that poop changes the water chemistry and can have a huge effect on everything else that lives in the water. It can alter the kinds of algae and bacteria that thrive there and may even lead to algae blooms, which can smother the water’s surface and use up all the oxygen.
Like I mentioned, the hippo population there has grown from four to eighty in just two decades. The researchers think that two decades from now their numbers could climb into the thousands. These hippos are technically an invasive species — the largest invasive species in the world, in fact. It remains to be seen how these lumbering interlopers affect their native neighbors, like manatees, caymans, and giant river turtles. This is the first study on what the hippos are doing to their environment, so there’s still a lot we don’t know. But it’s probably safe to say that they aren’t good news for their local ecosystems. — and it’s best we tackle this problem earlier than later. After all, those hippos are just going to make more hippos.
Let’s recap today’s takeaways
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Andrea Michelson and Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!