Saturday Citations: Hydroclimate whiplash in a catastrophic era, cellular coordination, a really old ice core
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This week, researchers at the Desert Research Institute reported that lead pollution likely caused widespread IQ declines in ancient Rome. An archaeological study in northern Israel challenged popular wisdom about prehistoric diets, finding that hunter-gatherers relied heavily on starchy plants for nutrition. And geophysicists at ETH Zurich modeled the Earth's lower mantle, finding areas in the planet's interior that appear to be the remains of submerged tectonic plates.
Additionally, the release of a hydroclimate study coincided with the terrible fires in Los Angeles; researchers proposed that cellular coordination preceded the development of multicellular organisms; and an international group drilled all the way to Arctic bedrock to retrieve one of the oldest-ever ice cores.
Ongoing catastrophe
The U.S. West Coast is experiencing deadly consequences of unchecked carbon emissions as wildfires blasted by the Santa Ana winds tore through the Los Angeles area, burning thousands of homes and other buildings. California experienced years of severe drought conditions, which were followed by a period starting in 2022 in which dozens of atmospheric rivers brought record-breaking precipitation, deluging valleys and mountain towns with rain and snow. But summer 2024 brought record-high temperatures and record-low December rainfall, and high winds and dry vegetation became a devastating combination.
A timely study in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment describes these kinds of rapid swings as "hydroclimate whiplash," providing evidence that it is increasing globally. "The evidence shows that hydroclimate whiplash has already increased due to global warming, and further warming will bring about even larger increases," said UCLA climate scientist and lead author Daniel Swain.
"This whiplash sequence in California has increased fire risk twofold: first, by greatly increasing the growth of flammable grass and brush in the months leading up to fire season, and then by drying it out to exceptionally high levels with the extreme dryness and warmth that followed."
Cells conspire
A study by researchers at the University of Bergen suggests that coordinated behavior at the cellular level predates the evolution of animals and multicellularity. I know! It's outrageous. I called my senator in Washington, D.C., but the staffer who answered the phone said his platform never considered the rosette-shaped colonies of the choanoflagellate Salpingoeca rosetta, the flagellated organism the researchers were studying. They report finding communication among individual cells of the colonies that regulated their shape and ciliary beating.
S. rosetta has a life stage in which colonies form through cell division, similarly to the embryos of animals. But they remain individual cells without differentiation. The researchers used a new genetic technology that visualizes calcium activity. In S. rosetta, the individual cells were synchronizing their behavior through the same voltage-gated calcium channels found in the neural systems of animals.
"Since our study reveals that colonial choanoflagellates coordinate their movements through shared signaling pathways, it offers fascinating insights into early sensory-motor systems," says the study's last author, Pawel Burkhardt.
Ice, ice baby
An international team successfully drilled one of the oldest ice cores ever retrieved at the level of Antarctic bedrock, a depth of two miles. Based on isotope analysis, they estimate that the ice is at least 1.2 million years old and the core is expected to reveal more information about the state of the atmosphere in past eons. They hope to learn more about how Ice Age cycles and atmospheric conditions have changed over time prior to the high carbon spikes coinciding with the industrial era.
The team previously drilled an 800,000-year-old core. That campaign yielded information on the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases, confirming that even during the hottest periods of the last 800,000 years, carbon levels never exceeded the levels caused by human activity.
Journal information: Nature Reviews Earth & Environment
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