Decade’s EndDecade’s EndGizmodo, io9, and Earther look back at our passing decade and look ahead at what kind of future awaits us in the next ten years.
The 2010s will be remembered as the decade when we could no longer deny climate change.
I mean, it’s not like any rational person could deny it in the preceding decades, but the past 10 years have seen scientists’ predictions become reality. Our world has entered an unsteady state, one where the things previous generations took for granted—a frozen Arctic, less violent weather—are no more.
While the impacts of the climate crisis are clear to anyone living on Earth, satellites continue to offer the most striking view of the large-scale changes. Orbiting anywhere from about 400 to 500 miles above the Earth’s surface, satellites operated by NASA and the European Space Agency have revolutionized our understanding of the planet. They’ve provided fuel for groundbreaking discoveries about climate change from pole to pole. But you don’t have to have a PhD to look at the imagery being sent back to Earth and see the changes afoot.
With the help of Pierre Markuse, a satellite imagery expert who worked with Sentinel Hub, Earther took a look at a handful of the changes over the past decade that illuminates the ongoing climate crisis.
Baffin Island’s disappearing ice cap
Ice all around the world is melting, and really, we could’ve picked any of the hundreds of disappearing glaciers, ice patches, and Arctic sea ice. But the Barnes Ice Cap on Canadian Arctic’s Baffin Island stands out for a few reasons. For one, the cap is a remnant of some of the Earth’s most ancient ice, the Laurentide Ice Sheet that stretched from Baffin Island as far south as Chicago during the last Ice Age. Momentous research published earlier this year used ancient plants taken at the edges of the cap to show the Arctic hasn’t been this heated in at least 115,000 years.
Despite existing for more than 100,000 years, the rapid Arctic warming of the past decade has taken a noticeable toll on the ice. Imagery from NASA’s Terra satellite shows the ice cap—which differs from a glacier because it sits in place rather than moving—has retreated and grown darker. The darkening of the cap could hasten its demise. While we may have to wait another few centuries for that to happen, the fact that we can see changes over the past decade illustrates we’re already losing history.
The Tubbs Fire remakes California
This has also been the decade of fire for the West as the climate crisis dried out forests and increased the odds of hot weather that can fuel large fires. But California is perhaps the place most synonymous with flames. Five of the largest fires on record for the state occurred this decade. Of the 10 most destructive fires that state has seen, seven occurred this decade (and six in the last three years alone).
The Tubbs Fire ranks second on that list. The October 2017 fire marauded through the North Bay community of Santa Rosa, charring nearly 37,000 acres and destroying 5,636 structures. ESA’s Sentinel satellite captured the immediate aftermath of the fire. But it also shows that two years later, the landscape and community are still recovering. The burn scar is still visible in the hills surrounding Santa Rosa and the neighborhoods most affected are still in early stages of being rebuilt.
When it occurred, the Tubbs Fire was the most destructive fire in state history, but it was bumped to number two just a year later by 2018’s horrific Camp Fire. This year’s fire season was mild by comparison, but that’s largely because utilities that have been responsible for some of the state’s worst fires shut down power to avoid a repeat (which came with a whole host of other issues). That raises questions about where we should build (or rebuild) and what future forest communities should look like.
The big ‘berg that captivated the world
“Superstar” and “iceberg” are not usually synonymous. But the Larsen C iceberg fit the bill. The saga of the ‘berg began in 2016 when cracked formed on the Larsen C ice shelf that sits on the Antarctic Peninsula. The cracks portended a massive iceberg could break away from the floating chunk of ice and reshape the remaining ice.
After a year, the iceberg finally broke away in July 2017. Dubbed A68, the iceberg was about half the size of Jamaica and began a languorous journey out to sea. The open water in front of the new face of the ice shelf became a protected area, and scientists planned a trip into the breach to catch a rare glimpse of what happens when a ‘berg opens up new water. Sea ice, unfortunately, thwarted the trip, but researchers eventually made it there in 2019.
What happens next for the rest of Larsen C is still TBD. The neighboring Larsen A and B ice shelves collapsed specularly in 1995 and 2002, respectively. The calving event was massive but largely due to natural forces, though warming oceans could now cut away at the weakened ice shelf. As for A68? The trillion-ton iceberg is still swirling along the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula on a slow track north. Once in warmer waters, it will eventually meet its watery demise.
The Aral Sea continues its disappearing act
The Aral Sea began to disappear long before the 2010s, but that doesn’t make its continued decline any more shocking. The inland sea was once the fourth-largest lake in the world. A 1960s Soviet irrigation project cut off the two rivers that were its lifeblood, and what was once the fourth-largest lake in the world has been shriveling in the decade since. The climate crisis has contributed to the sea’s transition into a desert, which, in turn, has further altered the region’s climate to an even harsher state.
The 2010s weren’t kind to the sea. Imagery from the start of the decade shows the Aral Sea had a bit of brackish water sitting in the eastern portion of the basin. But by 2014, the only bit of the sea remaining is a sliver on the west side of the lake. While the northern reaches of the sea have bounced back slightly thanks to a dam that has helped build up water levels, the larger southern portion continues to suffer.
Coastlines recede in the Arctic
Drew Point, Alaska, is about 70 miles as the crow flies from Utqiagvik, the northernmost city in the U.S. The pedestrian chunk of coastline isn’t anyone’s idea of an ideal place for a beach vacation. It’s cold, winter brings 24-hour darkness, polar bears are a concern. But the biggest issue is that it’s rapidly eroding.
Battering storms coupled with disappearing sea ice mean house-sized chunks of permafrost and tundra have fallen into the sea. The coastline has recently receded by up to 50 feet per year. The erosion can release stores of greenhouse gases the permafrost holds. And the loss of coast in this remote location is indicative of struggles around the Arctic. The Alaskan village of Kivalina is being forced to relocate due to erosion, making residents some of the first climate refugees in America. And other communities could follow suit as sea levels rise and continue their assault on the coasts.
Solar flourishes in the desert
A time-lapse of the Tengger Solar Park as it grows over the course of the 2010s.Gif: Pierre Markuse (Sentinel Hub)
Hey, it’s not all bad news (just mostly). Renewables are part of the solution to the climate crisis. While the world has failed to tilt the balance of the energy system toward them in the 2010s, we’ve at least made some headway. The Tengger Solar Park is the world’s largest solar farm, covering more than 16 square miles of China’s Ningxia province. The solar plants there have the capacity to generate 1.5 gigawatts of electricity, enough to power roughly 380,000 American homes.
In China and globally, wind and solar have been growing by leaps and bounds over the course of the 2010s. That’s the good news. The downside is, they still account for just 10 percent of global energy generation, a level they’ve stood at for years as energy demand continues to outpace the amount of renewables being installed. The world will have to draw down carbon emissions (and not just from electricity) nearly 8 percent per year in the 2020s to avert catastrophic climate change. Solar parks like these will be just the tip of the iceberg if we are to succeed.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
The European Space Agency is fast-tracking a new mission called Ramses, which will fly to near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis and join the space rock in 2029 when it comes very close to our planet — closer even than the region where geosynchronous satellites sit.
Ramses is short for Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety and, as its name suggests, is the next phase in humanity’s efforts to learn more about near-Earth asteroids (NEOs) and how we might deflect them should one ever be discovered on a collision course with planet Earth.
In order to launch in time to rendezvous with Apophis in February 2029, scientists at the European Space Agency have been given permission to start planning Ramses even before the multinational space agency officially adopts the mission. The sanctioning and appropriation of funding for the Ramses mission will hopefully take place at ESA’s Ministerial Council meeting (involving representatives from each of ESA’s member states) in November of 2025. To arrive at Apophis in February 2029, launch would have to take place in April 2028, the agency says.
This is a big deal because large asteroids don’t come this close to Earth very often. It is thus scientifically precious that, on April 13, 2029, Apophis will pass within 19,794 miles (31,860 kilometers) of Earth. For comparison, geosynchronous orbit is 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above Earth’s surface. Such close fly-bys by asteroids hundreds of meters across (Apophis is about 1,230 feet, or 375 meters, across) only occur on average once every 5,000 to 10,000 years. Miss this one, and we’ve got a long time to wait for the next.
When Apophis was discovered in 2004, it was for a short time the most dangerous asteroid known, being classified as having the potential to impact with Earth possibly in 2029, 2036, or 2068. Should an asteroid of its size strike Earth, it could gouge out a crater several kilometers across and devastate a country with shock waves, flash heating and earth tremors. If it crashed down in the ocean, it could send a towering tsunami to devastate coastlines in multiple countries.
Over time, as our knowledge of Apophis’ orbit became more refined, however, the risk of impact greatly went down. Radar observations of the asteroid in March of 2021 reduced the uncertainty in Apophis’ orbit from hundreds of kilometers to just a few kilometers, finally removing any lingering worries about an impact — at least for the next 100 years. (Beyond 100 years, asteroid orbits can become too unpredictable to plot with any accuracy, but there’s currently no suggestion that an impact will occur after 100 years.) So, Earth is expected to be perfectly safe in 2029 when Apophis comes through. Still, scientists want to see how Apophis responds by coming so close to Earth and entering our planet’s gravitational field.
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“There is still so much we have yet to learn about asteroids but, until now, we have had to travel deep into the solar system to study them and perform experiments ourselves to interact with their surface,” said Patrick Michel, who is the Director of Research at CNRS at Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice, France, in a statement. “Nature is bringing one to us and conducting the experiment itself. All we need to do is watch as Apophis is stretched and squeezed by strong tidal forces that may trigger landslides and other disturbances and reveal new material from beneath the surface.”
The Goldstone radar’s imagery of asteroid 99942 Apophis as it made its closest approach to Earth, in March 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/NSF/AUI/GBO)
By arriving at Apophis before the asteroid’s close encounter with Earth, and sticking with it throughout the flyby and beyond, Ramses will be in prime position to conduct before-and-after surveys to see how Apophis reacts to Earth. By looking for disturbances Earth’s gravitational tidal forces trigger on the asteroid’s surface, Ramses will be able to learn about Apophis’ internal structure, density, porosity and composition, all of which are characteristics that we would need to first understand before considering how best to deflect a similar asteroid were one ever found to be on a collision course with our world.
Besides assisting in protecting Earth, learning about Apophis will give scientists further insights into how similar asteroids formed in the early solar system, and, in the process, how planets (including Earth) formed out of the same material.
One way we already know Earth will affect Apophis is by changing its orbit. Currently, Apophis is categorized as an Aten-type asteroid, which is what we call the class of near-Earth objects that have a shorter orbit around the sun than Earth does. Apophis currently gets as far as 0.92 astronomical units (137.6 million km, or 85.5 million miles) from the sun. However, our planet will give Apophis a gravitational nudge that will enlarge its orbit to 1.1 astronomical units (164.6 million km, or 102 million miles), such that its orbital period becomes longer than Earth’s.
It will then be classed as an Apollo-type asteroid.
Ramses won’t be alone in tracking Apophis. NASA has repurposed their OSIRIS-REx mission, which returned a sample from another near-Earth asteroid, 101955 Bennu, in 2023. However, the spacecraft, renamed OSIRIS-APEX (Apophis Explorer), won’t arrive at the asteroid until April 23, 2029, ten days after the close encounter with Earth. OSIRIS-APEX will initially perform a flyby of Apophis at a distance of about 2,500 miles (4,000 km) from the object, then return in June that year to settle into orbit around Apophis for an 18-month mission.
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Furthermore, the European Space Agency still plans on launching its Hera spacecraft in October 2024 to follow-up on the DART mission to the double asteroid Didymos and Dimorphos. DART impacted the latter in a test of kinetic impactor capabilities for potentially changing a hazardous asteroid’s orbit around our planet. Hera will survey the binary asteroid system and observe the crater made by DART’s sacrifice to gain a better understanding of Dimorphos’ structure and composition post-impact, so that we can place the results in context.
The more near-Earth asteroids like Dimorphos and Apophis that we study, the greater that context becomes. Perhaps, one day, the understanding that we have gained from these missions will indeed save our planet.
