How much humans sleep could be impacted in the coming decades due to climate change, a study in the Journal One Earth reported. 

The study found that by the end of the century, humans could average 58 fewer hours of sleep per year due to rising temperatures. The study found that people who sleep in warmer climates generally get less sleep.

“In real-world settings, humans appear to be better at adapting their surroundings to obtain sufficient sleep under cooler outside conditions, whereas sleep loss increases with rising ambient temperatures,” the study noted.

The elderly, women, and residents of lower-income countries are impacted most, the authors wrote.

“High ambient temperatures may predispose susceptible segments of society to worsened affect, anger and aggression, hypertension and adverse cardiovascular outcomes, diminished cognitive performance, elevated risk of accidents and injuries and compromised immune system functioning,” the study wrote.

PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Standing in the middle of a barren farm field in northern Maine, Greg Porter walks the rows of dirt here with brown paper bags in one hand and white wooden stakes wrapped around his other.

Meticulously, he paces across this farm field, opening each numbered bag as he goes, marking down its location on a spreadsheet so that come harvest time in the fall, he knows exactly what he’s looking at.

Porter is part farmer and part researcher. He studies agriculture at the University of Maine in Presque Isle, a small rural community home to about 8,000 people that once was one of the nation’s largest producers of potatoes. They still produce plenty of spuds here, but Greg Porter isn’t farming potatoes for the money. He’s farming them for the future.

“We’re planting 45,000 different individual varieties of potatoes in this field. 45,000!” he remarked as he pulled out another handful of brown bags from his old GMC pickup truck.

Each brown bag Porter opens is filled with about 50 tubers; they’re essentially tiny potatoes. He and his research team have spent two years raising them in a greenhouse, combining thousands of different variations of potato parents to make potato offspring. Essentially, they’re trying to create the most efficient, most delicious potato out there.

These days though, the work in these fields is taking on new importance. With farmers across the country increasingly facing tougher growing conditions because of climate change, the hope is that somewhere in this field they harvest a new kind of potato that’s more resistant to climate change. Some may be able to tolerate higher temperatures and others may be able to handle more moisture.

“We’re developing DNA-based tools to stack the deck in our favor as we select them,” Porter added.

Last year, the potatoes industry in the United States was worth about $4 billion. All the more reason people like Don Flannery with the Maine Potato Board are paying close attention to the work Greg Porter and his team are doing.

“Potatoes are a high-input crop. It takes a lot of money to raise an acre of potatoes,” Flannery said sitting in his office surrounded by various pieces of potato memorabilia.

Aside from more extreme droughts and rain events, many of the varieties of potatoes being cultivated here need less fertilizer. With inflation and rising fertilizer prices, reducing any kind of costs for farmers could mean the difference between losing money and breaking even.

“If you’re not looking ahead and being proactive you’re usually behind in being reactive. Those that are gonna be successful in our business are the ones looking ahead,” Flannery added.

Back in the field, Porter and his team have started sending their potatoes to farms across the country to see how they hold up to growing conditions in states like Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana. The hope is to help potato farmers across this country produce the best tasting, most lucrative crops possible.

“The hope is we produce a few out of our 45,000 that have enough good characteristics that they’re worthy of commercial investment.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House on Friday approved wide-ranging legislation aimed at helping communities in the West cope with increasingly severe wildfires and drought — fueled by climate change — that have caused billions of dollars of damage to homes and businesses in recent years.

The measure combines 49 separate bills and would increase firefighter pay and benefits; boost resiliency and mitigation projects for communities affected by climate change; protect watersheds; and make it easier for wildfire victims to get federal assistance.

"Across America the impacts of climate change continue to worsen, and in this new normal, historic droughts and record-setting wildfires have become all too common,'' said Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., the bill's chief co-sponsor. Colorado has suffered increasingly devastating wildfires in recent years, including the Marshall fire last year that caused more than $513 million in damage and destroyed nearly 1,100 homes and structures in Boulder County.

"What once were wildfire seasons are now wildfire years. For families across the country who have lost their homes due to these devastating wildfires and for the neighborhoods impacted by drought, we know that we need to apply a whole-of-government approach to support community recovery and bolster environmental resiliency," Neguse said. "This is a bill that we believe meets the moment for the West."

The bill was approved, 218-199, as firefighters in California battled a blaze that forced evacuation of thousands of people near Yosemite National Park and crews in North Texas sought to contain another fire.

One Republican, Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, voted in favor of the bill, while Oregon Rep. Kurt Schrader was the only Democrat to oppose it.

The bill now goes to the Senate, where Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has sponsored a similar measure.

Both the House and Senate bills would permanently boost pay and benefits for federal wildland firefighters. President Joe Biden signed a measure last month giving them a hefty raise for the next two years, a move that affects more than 16,000 firefighters and comes as much of the West braces for another difficult wildfire season.

Pay raises for the federal firefighters had been included in last year's $1 trillion infrastructure bill, but the money was held up as federal agencies studied recruitment and retention data to decide where to deliver them. The raise approved by Biden was retroactive to Oct. 1, 2021, and expires Sept. 30, 2023.

The House bill would make the pay raises permanent and sets minimum pay for federal wildland firefighters at $20 per hour, or nearly $42,000 a year. It also raises eligibility for hazardous-duty pay and boosts mental health and other services for firefighters. The bill is named after smokejumper Tim Hart, who died fighting a wildfire in New Mexico last year.

"The West is hot — hotter than ever — it is dry and when it is windy, the West is on fire,'' said Rep. Kim Schrier, D-Wash. "And we are seeing this every year because of climate change. That's why this bill is so important.''

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the bill "a major victory for Californians — and for the country.'' The Oak Fire, the largest wildfire so far this year, "is ravaging our state,'' she said. "At the same time, countless of our communities regularly suffer lack of rainfall that can kill crops and further fuel fires."

The House bill would deliver "urgently needed resources" to combat fires and droughts, "which will only increase in frequency and intensity due to the climate crisis,'' Pelosi said. The bill includes $500 million to preserve water levels in key reservoirs in the drought-stricken Colorado River and invest in water recycling and desalination.

Republicans denounced the measure as "political messaging," noting that firefighters' hourly pay has already been increased above $20 in most cases. The House bill does not appropriate additional money for the Forest Service or other agencies, and without such an increase, the Forest Service says it would have to lay off about 470 wildland firefighters.

Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, the top Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee, called it "egregious" that Democrats would seek to enact provisions that could lead to firefighter layoffs in the midst of a devastating wildfire season.

"Democrats are finally waking up to the wildfire and drought crises, exacerbated by years of forest mismanagement and a lack of long-term water storage. Unfortunately, Democrats' proposals are anything but solutions,'' Westerman said. He accused Democrats of failing to follow science showing the need to manage forests before fires begin, and said Democrats "fail to construct the kind of long-term infrastructure needed to make communities resilient to drought'' while prioritizing "liberal talking points" about climate change.

Neguse called that accusation outrageous and noted that many of the bills included in the wildfire/drought legislation are Republican proposals.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the bill was important to the whole country — not just the West, where wildfires and drought are a daily reality.

"We are one nation indivisible and if one part of us is burning, we are all burning," Hoyer said.

Besides boosting firefighter pay, the bill enhances forest management projects intended to reduce hazardous fuels such as small trees and underbrush that can make wildfires far more dangerous. It also establishes grant programs to help communities affected by air pollution from wildfires and improve watersheds damaged by wildfire.

Republicans called the thinning projects — which also include prescribed burns and removal of vegetation — meaningless without waivers of lengthy environmental reviews that can delay forest treatment by years.

The White House said in a statement that it supports efforts to address climate change, wildfires and drought, but wants to "work with the Congress to ensure the many provisions in the (bill) avoid duplication with existing authorities and administration efforts."

Day to day, running a farm takes a lot of work.

“You can see the soybean pods starting to form,” Lee Tesdell, a farm owner in Iowa, said.

Farms are facing more and more unknowns due to a changing climate.

“Two years ago, we had a derecho here,” he explained. “This field was corn that year and the corn got flattened, federal crop insurance paid this farmer to destroy his corn, didn't even harvest it that year.”

Tesdell showed us around his farm, which has been in the family for more than 100 years. He’s now focused on more resilient farming.

“We need to diversify more,” he said.

Just this April, a rain storm caused flooding, taking fertilizer and topsoil with it.

“We expect to see more of those severe weather events,” he said.

This is where federal crop insurance comes in.

“This crop insurance program pays farmers when they have a crop yield or revenue loss,” said Anne Schechinger, the midwest director for the Environmental Working Group.

The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit research organization that does ongoing research on how much climate is impacting these payouts.

From 1995 to 2020, farmers received more than $143.5 billion in federal crop insurance, according to an Environmental Working Group analysis of Department of Agriculture data.

“The biggest causes of loss over that big time from 1995 to 2020, first was drought. That was far and above the largest cause of loss. And the other was excessive moisture, so the other side of drought,” Schechinger said.

“The federal crop insurance program has saved, financial saved, some farmers some years,” Tesdell said.

But it’s not just farmers footing the bill.

“Sixty percent of these crop insurance premiums are subsidized by taxpayers, so we all pay this bill,” Schechinger said.

“We are asking an investment from taxpayers to have a more stable farm economy and more stable food system,” Aaron Lehman, president of the Iowa Farmers Union, said.

In places like Iowa for example, where corn fields stretch as far as the horizon, crop insurance can be an important tool. Lehman said farmers should also do their part.

“I think that’s why it’s important for farmers to be involved in doing things that can mitigate climate change,” Lehman said. “Makes sense that we should do more to tie good practices to crop insurance.”

“This federal crop insurance program really discouraged farmers from adapting to climate change,” Schechinger said.

Every five years, the federal farm bill is discussed and changes are made. For the 2023 farm bill, discussions have already begun in Washington D.C.

“Our farm bill kind of sets the direction for our farm policy for the next five years, so it’s important that the discussions include crop insurance and how we can have the most effective crop insurance,” Lehman said.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — More intense severe weather events fueled by climate change are disproportionately impacting homeless Americans, who are already more vulnerable to the elements while living outside.

As the president of Central Union Mission in Washington D.C., Joe Mettimano sees how the weather dictates a lot of what they do, including how many people come through the doors. An average of 5,000 people rely on the shelter each month.

"People who are homeless, who prefer being outside, find it easier to sleep outside in the summertime versus cold and rain in the winter," Mettimano said.

The worse the weather, the more people who end up coming to shelters like this one across the country, looking for a dry or warm place to take refuge.

"People are people, and the weather impacts all of us in different ways," he added.

But climate change is creating more extreme weather events, putting those who are homeless in even more precarious positions.

America has experienced an urban flood event once every two to three days for the last 25 years. Climate change is only exacerbating the frequency of extreme flood events. The estimated 500,000 Americans who experience homelessness each year usually feel the impacts first.

"When there is more rain, more storms, more snowfall, hotter summers, it does put more demands on us," Mettimano said.

There’s a mental health aspect to all of this as well.

"It’s a very vulnerable place to be in. It’s also very dehumanizing when you’re sleeping in an alley and people won’t make eye contact with you, but the weather absolutely plays a role in all that. If you’re outside, you can sometimes find shelter under a bridge. It’s still cold. It’s still raining," Meetimano added.

To help those who are living out in the elements, Central Union Mission offers folks a wide range of preventative medical care from dental checkups to doctor visits, all for free.

"We save lives every day because of work like that," he said.

German police detained climate activists Greta Thunberg during a coal mine protest on Tuesday.

The 20-year-old was seen being carried away from the site by officers in riot gear.

The operation to evict climate activists who flocked to the site in the hamlet of Luetzerath kicked off last week. Police cleared people out of farm buildings, the few remaining houses and a few dozen makeshift constructions such as tree houses.

On Saturday, thousands of people demonstrated nearby against the eviction and the planned expansion of the Garzweiler coal mine. There were standoffs with police as some protesters tried to reach the village, which is now fenced off, and the mine.

Environmentalists say bulldozing the village to expand the Garzweiler mine would result in huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. The government and utility company RWE argue the coal is needed to ensure Germany’s energy security.

The regional and national governments, both of which include the environmentalist Green party, reached a deal with RWE last year allowing it to destroy the abandoned village in return for ending coal use by 2030, rather than 2038.

The Greens' leaders argue that the deal fulfills many of the environmentalists’ demands and saved five other villages from demolition, and that Luetzerath is the wrong symbol for protests. Activists reject that stance.

Police said in a statement Sunday that nearly 300 people have been removed so far from Luetzerath. They added that “the rescue by RWE Power of the two people in underground structures continues; beyond that, the clearance by police is complete.”

They said that 12 people were detained in connection with Saturday's incidents. Demolition of the buildings in Luetzerath is already underway.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A certain mystique laps upon the shores. Even in the dead of winter on the Chesapeake Bay, there are still plenty of signs of life.

"This time of year, I notice how clear the water is," said Beth McGee, who has spent decades studying the nation's largest estuary.

On the surface, things may look calm here. However, this watershed, which touches six states and spans over 64,000 square miles, is sick.

"All told the bay is still struggling," said McGee, who works for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Every year, the nonprofit gives this waterway a grade based on how healthy it is. This year, it received a D+.

"Climate change is making our restoration efforts more challenging. More severe storms are bringing more pollution into the bay," McGee said.

What’s happening here has become a case study on just how hard it is to clean up and restore vital watersheds and estuaries, as well as reverse the impacts of pollution and global warming even as costly plans are being put in place nationwide to push back against climate change.

Environmentalists first started realizing how polluted the Chesapeake was back in the 1970s. By 2010, government agencies, nonprofits and environmentalists started taking action to clean it up.

"People across the country were saying, 'We need to watch this,' because they are setting themselves up for success. They have plans. They have accountability that no other watershed has had," McGee added.

Thirteen years later, though, progress has been slow.

Across the lower 48 states, there are 78 major watersheds, essentially basins catching water from rivers as they hit the sea. But of the more than 700,000 miles of waterways in the US, nearly 51% are impaired by pollution.

"One hundred years ago, people didn’t give rivers and streams much thought," explained Matt Ehrhart with the Stroud Water Research Center. "Clean fresh water is one of the most vital resources we have."

Ehrhart says that these days, most pollutants in our nation's watersheds come from agriculture. Fertilizers and pesticides used on crops often run off into nearby rivers and streams. There are other causes, like runoff from the road salt we use in the winter.

"It’s critical the way we live on the landscape doesn’t unduly impact those resources," he added.

SAN DIEGO, Calif. — According to scientists, the ocean is protecting us from some of the worst effects of climate change, absorbing more than 90% of the heat from human-caused global warming and about one-third of our carbon emissions.

“Every person in the world should care about the oceans because they play such a fundamental role in our climate," says Sarah Purkey, an assistant professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Without the ocean, Purkey says, our atmosphere would have warmed by astonishing numbers over the last few decades. She's part of an international effort to monitor and forecast the effects of ocean warming and ocean acidification on sea life.

"There are parts of it that are really remote. We have to be able to measure space and time. And it’s a big space and varies pretty heavily with time.”

A multi-institutional effort, the Global Ocean Biogeochemistry Array (GO-BGC) is a project to build a global network of chemical and biological sensors to monitor ocean health. With support from a $53 million grant from the National Science Foundation, researchers in the US are working to deploy 500 robotic ocean-monitoring floats around the globe.

“The classic way to measure is using ships," said Dan Rudnick, a Scripps Institution of Oceanography professor. “We can have quite a few, but not the number we need to make measurements all the time, everywhere. That’s where robots come in handy.”

This network of floats will collect data on the chemistry and the biology of the ocean from the surface to a depth of 2,000 meters, enhancing the existing Argo array that monitors ocean temperature and salinity.

“They connect via the Iridium satellite system. So, basically, like a cell phone, they’re going to text their data back. And this, in real-time, is for scientists but also goes into your weather forecast. And is used by a whole bunch of different systems internationally and in the US," said Purkey.

The data will help scientists monitor elemental cycles of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen in the ocean through all seasons of the year.

They'll be able to monitor microscopic plankton, which in addition to supporting most of life in the ocean, supplies oxygen to and removes carbon dioxide from the sea and the atmosphere.

The Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling project (SOCCOM) is the world's first large-scale biogeochemical Argo deployment. The NSF-sponsored program focuses on unlocking the mysteries of the Southern Ocean and determining its influence on climate.

“Global warming is a thing. The ocean is warming gradually. But what's interesting is different regions are warming more rapidly, and different regions are more or less taking turns increasing more rapidly," said Rudnick.

The robots are also inspiring the next generation of ocean explorers. Students can engage directly with world-class scientists through the Adopt-A-Float program and learn about their research by naming and tracking floats.

George Matsumoto of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute pairs interested classrooms with SOCCOM scientists scheduled to deploy floats in the Southern Ocean. Teachers are provided with background materials on the Southern Ocean and on the specific work being done by SOCCOM researchers.

“All these data are made public as soon as we collect them," said Rudnick. “I think that’s important for science, to make our science as open as possible.”

HORNBROOK, Calif. — The Iron Gate Dam, one of four dams on the Klamath River, will be removed in 2023. It will be the largest dam removal in U.S. history.

For Pachomio Feliz, the waters of the Klamath River and Pacific are life. He’s a member of the Yurok Tribe.

“This is our lifeblood," he said. "Without the river, we’d be dead.”

The Klamath River runs from southern Oregon to the Pacific Ocean in California.

Along the way, there are four dams holding back the river's natural flow. The dams were originally built to produce electricity and regulate water levels on the river. Environmentalists in the area say those dams are harming the river’s health.

“It has huge impacts. It has impacts on water quality, huge impacts on river systems and the basins where they’re placed,” said Jim McCarthy, an activist working for WaterWatch, a group in Oregon that advocates for river and water health.

WaterWatch, and other groups, have been advocating for dam removals around the U.S. for decades.

“I think what people don’t realize is there are a lot of dams in the country, over 90,000,” said Brian Graber, who works for the group, American Rivers.

According to the group's most recent dam report, 85% of the country’s dams are over 50 years old, which is the average life expectancy for most dams.

“We have to be deliberate about what we do with our rivers because they are facing more and more stress and if we want to keep these resources alive, taking out dams is part of the portfolio of things we need to be doing,” said McCarthy.

The Klamath’s health has been declining for years. The river was once the third-largest salmon run on the West Coast. The dams have impacted the salmon’s habitat and food supply, causing the runs to drop drastically. Those fish were the food supply for the Yurok Tribe.

“The word for salmon in Yurok is Ney-puy. The direct translation of Ney-puy means ‘what we eat’,” said Frankie Myers, the vice-chair of the Yurok Tribe.

The dams have dominated the river his whole life.

“The lower four dams on the Klamath River—for Yurok people— are a monument to colonialism,” said Myers.

The Yurok and advocates like Brian and Jim have been fighting through government red tape for the last 20 years. They might have finally achieved their goal.

Right now, the four dams are slated to be removed starting next year.

“The removal of the four lower dams on the Klamath River would have a dramatic impact on our way of life not only for our subsistence fishery but for the emotional and mental well-being of our people as well,” said Myers.

If the four are removed it will join a growing list. Nearly 60 dams were removed last year in 22 states and almost 2,000 dams have been removed over the last 100 years.

Myers hopes the Klamath will be renewed for his tribe.

“This has been my fight, my whole life. My children, my prayer, is that it won’t be theirs. Not that they won’t need to fight. Not that they won’t have a struggle, but that this struggle won’t be theirs,” he said.

FIDALGO ISLAND, WA — Hope is a rare term to be applied to the environment these days, but looking off into the horizon, the people who know this land best see a beautiful future in store for coastal communities both here and beyond.

Alana Quintasket and Joe Williams are members of the Swinomish tribe, whose traditions are deeply rooted in coastal life.

Digging for clams and other shellfish is a big part of their identity, as it has been for centuries, but what’s happening on their lands in western Washington is a reflection of what’s happening up, down and across coast lines nationwide.

"Our biologists, our shellfish team have been kind of documenting throughout the Puget Sound. They're noticing a definite decline in that population," said Williams.

The ocean absorbs 30% of the CO2 in the atmosphere. According to the National Ocean and Atmopheric Administration, the excess carbon in the atmosphere has not only led to warmer seas but it changes the ocean’s PH balance, making the water more acidic.

Coastal areas in the country have seen shellfish population drops as large as 85%. Nationally, if nothing changes its predicted that by the end of the century, shellfish populations nationwide will continue to drop by almost half.

"We're under apocalyptic circumstances, where it is a climate crisis and lives are at stake. As indigenous people and indigenous beings of the land, it's our responsibility to do what we can to restore the practices that have been left for us," said Quintasket.

In the face of a crisis, the Swinomish have a plan to restore the shellfish population: build the very clam gardens their ancestors did centuries ago.

In a few weeks, the Swinomish will be building a clam garden, a tough of rocks meant to be the ideal environment for clam and shellfish growth, on a section of coastline. This ancient practice can increase shellfish growth by 400%.

"It's really expanding the area where clams can grow," said Courtney Grenier, a marine ecologist with the Swinomish Tribal Community.

She says while the numbers don’t lie, scientists are still trying to figure out why the clam gardens are so successful.

"It doesn’t have to be confirmed by Western science to acknowledge there has been this technology that has been used and can still be implemented in a way that’s still in harmony with nature," she said.

The Swinomish are not only looking at this as an opportunity to combat climate change, but by making this a community project, they hope to physically reconnect generations after recent history and past tragedies have taken so much.

"Not only are we trying to get through this pandemic to make it an endemic, but we're also thinking of the fear for the climate, and for us to have something to be excited about is just something good for our people," said Quintasket.

As the project is set into motion, the Swinomish hope other coastal communities are listening and watching to see what native practices are already out there that we can use in our collective fight for our environment.

"There are plenty of teachings to help us get through this, this climate change, we just have to pay attention and be at one with our nature," said Williams.

The word "megadrought" isn't new in the science community. It's been in use since the early 1990s.

But new findings from research conducted at UCLA have the word making headlines in the Western U.S. this week.

According to the study, the last 22 years are now the driest out of the last 1,200 years in the Western U.S. That kind of statistic has earned the last two decades the classification of "megadrought".

But what does that mean?

A megadrought is a period of 20 to 30 years where conditions are drier than average. There may be some wet years sprinkled in, but drought impacts remain throughout the period. These are much longer in scale than droughts you typically hear meteorologists talk about, which typically last months or years.

Climate scientists can identify megadroughts using tree ring data that stretches back over a thousand years.

“Every year a tree grows an annual growth ring and in a wet year, the ring will be really wide because the tree grows a lot," said Park Williams, one of the study's authors. "In a dry year, the tree grows a little bit because it’s really dry.”

Those rings reveal patterns that climate scientists can use to track megadroughts. They have identified four of them in the Western U.S. since the year 800. They all range between 23 and 30 years in length but vary in severity. Each megadrought ended with a 10-to-15 year period of wetter-than-average conditions, showing evidence of natural climate variability over long timescales.

But that natural cycle is likely trending drier in both droughts and rainy periods because of human-caused climate change. Increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide from human activity are causing Earth's average temperature to rise. As the atmosphere warms, it pulls more moisture out of the ground, exacerbating drought conditions and making rainy periods weaker and further between.

So while this latest megadrought cycle is expected to end in the next five to 10 years, the wetter period that follows may be less pronounced than in previous cycles.

Watch the video above for the full story.

The highest glacier on the world's tallest mountain is losing decades worth of ice every year because of human-induced climate change, a new study shows.

Related video above: Experts say penguins may provide clues to our climate situation

The findings serve as a warning that rapid glacier melt at some of the Earth's highest points could bring worsening climate impacts, including more frequent avalanches and a drying-up of water sources that around 1.6 billion people in mountain ranges depend on for drinking, irrigation and hydropower.

Ice that took around 2,000 years to form on the South Col Glacier has melted in around 25 years, which means it has thinned out around 80 times faster than it formed.

While glacier melt is widely studied, little scientific attention has been paid to glaciers at the highest points of the planet, the researchers argue in the study, published in Nature Portfolio Journal Climate and Atmospheric Science.

A team of scientists and climbers, including six from the University of Maine, visited the glacier in 2019 and collected samples from an around 32 feet ice core. They also installed the world's two highest automatic weather stations to collect data and answer a question: Are the Earth's most out-of-reach glaciers impacted by human-linked climate change?

"The answer is a resounding yes, and very significantly since the late 1990s," said Paul Mayewski, the expedition leader and the director of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine.

The researchers said that the findings not only confirmed that human-sourced climate change reached the highest points on Earth, but that is it was also disrupting the critical balance that snow-covered surfaces provide.

"It's a complete change from what has been experienced in that area, throughout probably all of the period of occupation by humans in the mountains," Mayewski told CNN. "And it's happened very fast."

The research showed that once the glacier's ice became exposed, it lost around 180 feet of ice in a quarter-century. The researchers note that the glacier has transformed from consisting of snowpack into predominantly ice, and that change could have started as early as the 1950s. But the ice loss has been most intense since the late 1990s.

This transformation to ice means the glacier can no longer reflect radiation from the sun, making its melt more rapid.

Model simulations show that because of the extreme exposure to solar radiation, melting or vaporization in this region can speed up by a factor of more than 20, once snow cover transforms to ice. A drop in relative humidity levels and stronger winds are also factors.

In addition to all the impacts on those who depend on water from glaciers, the current rate of melt would also make expeditions on Mount Everest more challenging, as snow and ice cover thin further over coming decades.

"Polar bears have been the iconic symbol for warming of the Arctic and the loss of sea ice," Mayewski said. "We're hoping that what's happened high up on Everest will be another iconic call and demonstration."

The 2019 expedition set three Guinness World Records: The highest altitude ice core taken at 8,020 meters, the highest altitude microplastic found on land, which were likely from clothing or tents, found at 8,440 meters; and the highest altitude weather station on land, installed at "Balcony," a ridge sitting 8,430 meters above sea level.

The station is the first installed in what is known as the "death zone" for its dangerous hiking conditions — it's the zone above 8,000 meters where there's not enough enough oxygen to sustain life beyond short periods of time.

The Los Angeles City Council has approved a measure to ban new oil and gas wells and phase out existing ones.

The measure would shut down oil and gas fields in the city after a decade of complaints from residents about negative health impacts including nosebleeds, wheezing and coughing. Residents of the city blamed air pollution on the sites.

Activists say that Black and Latino residents of the city are the most affected by pollution from the sites.

The Los Angeles City Council voted on Wednesday for a plan that would phase out new wells over a period of five years. As CNBC reported, over half a million Los Angeles residents live within a quarter-mile of an active oil and gas well, which can release various pollutants including benzene and hydrogen sulfide.

Phaseouts like these are part of what is being seen as a statewide movement in California to move away from fossil fuel production to meet ambitious, but possible climate goals. There's also a strong public health motivation to the movement.

As the Associated Press reported, California's oil and gas regulator proposed in October to ban new oil and gas wells that lie within 3,200 feet of schools, homes, and hospitals.

Existing wells could potentially be subject to new pollution controls.

Technology is changing the way pollution is tracked across the United States.

That is clear in California, where a tool called CalEnviroScreen allows users to find out the relative impact of pollution on their community.

"The idea was to try to understand and address this issue of cumulative impacts," said Dr. John Faust, who works in California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment. "CalEnviroScreen is a geographic screening tool that's intended to identify communities in California that are burdened by multiple sources of pollution."

The team at California's OEHHA first published CalEnviroScreen in 2013. The tool is now in its fourth edition.

Californians or other interested parties can look up the relative pollution in any U.S. Census tract in the state.

"There are about 21 [indicators] that represent different types of pollution," said Dr. Faust, "like air quality, water quality ... the presence of solid waste, landfills, and so forth. Each of those has an indicator that is scored in relation to all the other Census tracts in the state. For example, an 89 percentile in a given Census tract means that the score is higher than 89% of the other Census tracts across the state."

The publicly available tool is just one way the data is used.

A 2012 California state law required the state's Environmental Protection Agency to identify communities that are disproportionately impacted by pollution.

CalEnviroScreen was developed to help meet that goal. Data scientists had to assemble a variety of statistics from different state and federal agencies. Experts have called the finished product groundbreaking.

"Bringing all the data sets to a uniform geography, the Census tract, was pretty new for a lot of the data sets in CalEnviroScreen," said Laura August, a scientist at OEHHA. "The data might have existed, but we had to develop methods to aggregate it at a similar uniform scale for all the data sets."

"At this point," said Dr. Faust, "several billions of dollars have been allocated to disadvantaged communities as a result of this program."

The federal government has a similar mapping tool, EJSCREEN. It contains many of the same features as CalEnviroScreen, but does not include state-specific data, such as pesticide reporting.

Other states are developing their own tools.

"Washington state has had a similar initiative, and I know the state of Michigan has also started on this path," said Dr. Faust. "And as I understand, the state of Colorado's department of public health and environment is also committed to looking at the development of a similar tool."

OEHHA leaders say this tool would not have been possible without the technological innovations of the last decade.

"When I started 12 years ago, online, interactive maps weren't as easily developed and created," said August. "And now, it's just kind of a standard, that we can put our data on a map, that someone can search their address. That technology has definitely been a benefit."

Christmas Day doesn't feel much like winter for much of the South and Southeast.

More than 200 records may be broken Christmas Day through Wednesday from Texas to the southeastern U.S. as warm air pushes into the region, bringing spring- and summerlike temperatures. Many locations, including Dallas, Houston and Austin are expected to break daily record highs, but high-temperature records for the entire month of December could also be broken.

Specifically, Dallas has a forecast high for Christmas of 83, which is only 6 degrees under its July 4 high; Houston has a forecast high of 81, which is 9 degrees below its July 4 high.

Wichita Falls, Texas, hit 91 Friday -- warmer than its July 4 high of 88, and Grandfield, Oklahoma, reached 89, which also beats its July 4 high of 88.

Along with the warm temperatures, level 2 of 3 critical fire danger has been issued by the Storm Prediction Center for parts of west Texas and Oklahoma and east Colorado on Sunday due to minimal rain chances, sustained winds up to 25 mph and very low relative humidity that will raise wildfire concerns. The warm weather trend will continue through Wednesday before temperatures lower slightly, but highs will remain above average all week.

The West faces rain and heavy snowfall

Contrasting the spring- and summer-like temperatures across the South, the West is seeing rounds of coastal rain and heavy high elevation snowfall.

Multiple rounds of snow are impacting the West from a Christmas Day system, contributing to significant mountain snowfall and lower elevation rainfall on the West Coast.

More than 6 million people across the Western U.S. are under a winter storm warning.

Winter storm warnings are reaching as far south as the San Bernardino and Riverside County Mountains.

This is due to Arctic air pushing into the Pacific Northwest, which is causing winter storm alerts to reach near the coast, producing a rare White Christmas for places like Seattle and Portland.

Seattle has only seen measurable snow on Christmas Day nine times in 127 years of records. Holiday weekend travel conditions in the region could be dangerous due to tall snowdrifts and whiteout conditions.

Oregon is in a state of emergency through Jan. 3 due to the potential for hazardous winter weather conditions and sustained subfreezing temperatures.

Portland may see up to 4 inches of snow for Christmas Day. This system is also bringing heavy rainfall to Southern California on Christmas with much of the California coast seeing up to 4 inches of rainfall throughout the next five days.

The system that is causing heavy snow and rainfall to the West will head toward the upper Midwest, bringing heavy snowfall to much of the area. Winter weather watches have already been issued, and some places can see up to a foot of snowfall.

Winter weather advisories issued for the Northeast

The Northeast is also not free from inclement weather. Winter weather advisories are in effect for parts of the Northeast, largely due to freezing rain.

Freezing rain may create slippery and hazardous road conditions in major cities like Boston. New England could see more widespread snowfall by Saturday night. Some parts of the northeast could see up to half an inch of ice accumulation.

A white Christmas seems to be slowly morphing from a reliable reality to a dream of snowy holidays past for large swaths of the United States in recent decades.

Analysis of 40 years of Dec. 25 U.S. snow measurements shows that less of the country now has snow for Christmas than in the 1980s.

That's especially true in a belt across the nation’s midsection — from Baltimore to Denver and a few hundred miles farther north. And snow that falls doesn’t measure up to past depths.

Scientists say the decline in the number of white Christmases is relatively small and caution about drawing conclusions. But it’s noticeable and matters mightily to some people like George Holland.

The retired Dubuque, Iowa, educator known for his front yard nativity scenes said snow on Christmas is supposed to be part of the holiday: "The one that makes my heart warm is after going to midnight Mass and coming outside and it's snowing."

But the weather in Dubuque hasn't cooperated in recent years. "We don’t have white Christmas," said boutique owner Bill Kaesbauer. "We haven’t had any in years."

The last one was in 2017 in Dubuque, which weather records show used to have white Christmases nearly two out of three years.

The average December temperature in the continental U.S. was a tad below freezing from 1981 to 1990, federal weather records show. And from 2011 to 2020, it was up to an average slightly above 35 degrees, considerably above the freezing mark.

But what did that warming trend, natural weather variability and a western megadrought mean to white Christmases?

From 1981 to 1990, on average, almost 47% of the country had snow on the ground Christmas Day, with an average depth of 3.5 inches, according to an analysis of ground observation data by the University of Arizona for The Associated Press. From 2011 to 2020, Christmas snow cover was down to 38%, with an average depth of 2.7 inches.

The change was particularly pronounced in a swath from about the Mason-Dixon line to just north of Detroit, Chicago, and Nebraska. The Christmas snow cover average there went from nearly 55% in the 1980s to slightly above 41% now, the Arizona data shows. Average snow depth fell from 3.5 inches to 2.4 inches.

The numbers are small enough that it's difficult to tell whether this is a meaningful trend and, if so, whether climate change or natural weather variability is the cause, said University of Arizona atmospheric scientist Xubin Zeng, who ran the data.

Still, Zeng, who has published studies on decreasing snowpack in the western U.S. being connected to climate change, said the downward slide of white Christmases is consistent with global warming.

In 20 to 30 years "with climate warming, the prospects of a white Christmas in many parts of the U.S.A. will be slim indeed," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

A separate analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration looks at "climate normals" — 30-year periods for about 5,000 weather stations across the lower 48 states. Comparing normals for 1981-2010 to normals for 1991-2020 shows more stations are seeing statistical odds for a white Christmas shrink, but the agency cautions against drawing a conclusion about any trend.

In much of Iowa and eastern Washington, the changes are bigger than elsewhere, according to NOAA. From 1981 to 2010, Dubuque’s chance for a white Christmas was 63% but it’s now down to 42%. Walla Walla, Washington’s chance of getting a white Christmas dropped in half from 19% in 1981 to 2010 to 9.5% now.

Denver’s airport station went from 40% chance of Christmas snow from 1981 to 2010 to 34%. Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Milwaukee, Fort Wayne, Topeka, Des Moines, Akron, Albany, Olympia, Rapid City, and Oklahoma City airports saw drops of three or four percentage points.

The line where there’s at least a 10% chance for a white Christmas moved noticeably north with the new normals, said NOAA climate scientist Imke Durre. And the nation’s capital went from 10% to 7%.

"The movement of that line is consistent with a warmer December," Durre said.

New York, Philadelphia and Concord, New Hampshire, recorded small increases in chances of Christmas snow on the ground.

A data set from Rutgers University’s global snow lab finds continental U.S. snow in the last week of December slightly increasing, not decreasing, said climate scientist David Robinson, whose data based on satellite imagery goes back to 1966.

"There’s no trend. You just don’t see it," Robinson said.

Often people in their 60s and 70s think there are fewer white Christmases, he added, because the 1960s had more than usual white Christmases.

Temperature alters snowfall in two different ways. In warmer borderline areas, warmer air turns snow into rain. But in cooler more northern areas where even higher temperatures are still below freezing, warmer temperatures mean more snow because warmer air holds more moisture, which comes down as snow, meteorologists said.

Several meteorologists cautioned about finding trends in complex data where both precipitation and temperature are factors. But despite those issues, fewer white Christmases seems associated with warmer temperatures from climate change, said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini.

"It matters for many as an emotional weight of how the season ought to feel or how we think it ought to feel," National Snow and Ice Data scientist Twila Moon said. "But the climate scientist in me is also very interested in having a white Christmas because it’s an indicator of how much and what type of precipitation we’ve gotten. And that is also really important because so much of our country is dealing with extreme drought right now."

In Helena, Montana, "it definitely feels like we don’t have as much snow or the winters are different," said Shawn Whyte on Tuesday as the high hit 52. "I’m looking out my window right now and I have a lovely view of the entire hill in a valley and it is brown. It’s ugly and brown."

"For us here, we expect winter and cold and it makes you feel snuggly and cozy," said Whyte, an information technology manager who said she's having trouble getting her Christmas spirit with no snow.

Maybe, she said, if she just goes caroling it will be like a Hallmark movie and the Christmas snow will come at the last minute.

Last weekend's tornadoes in the south and Midwest are believed to be the deadliest on record for December. So far, about 90 people are confirmed to have been killed in western Kentucky, Arkansas, Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday that 16 people in his state are still missing following the storms.

Forecasters say there was an indication of a possible significant weather event days ahead of the storm — but they had no idea the storms would be so violent.

"As we got closer to the event, it became the upper-level pattern is matching up well, the temperatures have stayed extremely warm at the ground, and nothing's happened to cool that off," said Harold Brooks, a scientist with NOAA's National Weather Service Storm Lab.

Brooks says large outbreaks of violent tornadoes are not uncommon in December, nor are large upper-level systems.

But one rare factor that led to last week's extreme weather event was the large area of warm, moist air on the ground. The region had been experiencing record warm temperatures, and there have been no recent cold fronts to cool down the Gulf of Mexico.

"The Gulf temperatures look like they should look a couple of months ago, and so they're very high," Brooks said. "That means when air comes out of the south, it's bringing up a lot of warm, moist air, which is the fuel for the thunderstorms. So, that's the key thing — that warm, moist air fuels what's under first, and then the strong, upper-level system brings in the winds, which are necessary to make those storms rotate and be potential tornadoes."

Warmer temperatures are one ingredient for tornadoes that can be attributed to climate change. But Brooks says it's hard to make a direct link to climate change because tornadoes mostly depend on the wind.

"The fact that that may actually decrease in the future makes the climate connection a lot harder in tornadoes than it does in a lot of other things," Brooks said. "It's not as straightforward is as temperature records or heavy rainfall, which both are really pretty directly related to the planet warming."

As scientists continue to study last week's tornado outbreak, Brooks made one message clear — people need to pay attention to potential weather events before they happen, so families can make potentially life-saving plans.

Denver finally got its first snowfall of the season, shattering an 87-year-old record for the latest first snow.

It wasn't much: The official measurement on Friday at Denver International Airport was just three-tenths of an inch.

Jim Kalina, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boulder, says the Denver metro region is experiencing an extended La Nina weather pattern. That tends to produce drier weather conditions.

The conditions also come as much of Western U.S. is experiencing a megadrought that studies link to human-caused climate change.

Before Friday, the Mile High City's latest measurable snowfall was on Nov. 21, 1934.

While Denver received less than an inch of snow, the surrounding mountains saw their first major snowfall of the season.

Aspen, Silverton, Telluride and Crested Butte all reported more than a foot of snow. On top of the snow, much of Colorado is under wind warnings that will stretch into Saturday.

The calendar said December but the warm moist air screamed of springtime. Add an eastbound storm front guided by a La Nina weather pattern into that mismatch and it spawned tornadoes that killed dozens over five U.S. states.

Tornadoes in December are unusual, but not unheard of. But the ferocity and path length of Friday night's tornadoes likely put them in a category of their own, meteorologists say. One of the twisters likely broke a nearly 100-year-old record for how long a tornado stayed on the ground in a path of destruction, experts said.

“One word: remarkable; unbelievable would be another,” said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini. “It was really a late spring type of setup in in the middle of December.”

Warm weather was a crucial ingredient in this tornado outbreak, but whether climate change is a factor is not quite as clear, meteorologists say.

Scientists say figuring out how climate change is affecting the frequency of tornadoes is complicated and their understanding is still evolving. But they do say the atmospheric conditions that give rise to such outbreaks are intensifying in the winter as the planet warms. And tornado alley is shifting farther east away from the Kansas-Oklahoma area and into states where Friday's killers hit.

Here's a look at what's known about Friday's tornado outbreak and the role of climate change in such weather events.

WHAT CAUSES A TORNADO?

Tornadoes are whirling, vertical air columns that form from thunderstorms and stretch to the ground. They travel with ferocious speed and lay waste to everything in their path.

Thunderstorms occur when denser, drier cold air is pushed over warmer, humid air, conditions scientists call atmospheric instability. As that happens, an updraft is created when the warm air rises. When winds vary in speed or direction at different altitudes — a condition known as wind shear — the updraft will start to spin.

These changes in winds produce the spin necessary for a tornado. For especially strong tornadoes, changes are needed in both the wind’s speed and direction.

“When considerable variation in wind is found over the lowest few thousand feet of the atmosphere, tornado-producing ‘supercell thunderstorms’ are possible,” said Paul Markowski, professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University. “That’s what we had yesterday.”

There's usually a lot of wind shear in the winter because of the big difference in temperature and air pressure between the equator and the Arctic, Gensini said.

But usually, there's not a lot of instability in the winter that's needed for tornadoes because the air isn't as warm and humid, Gensini said. This time there was.

WHAT CONDITIONS LED TO STORMS OF THIS SCALE?

A few factors, which meteorologists will continue to study.

Spring-like temperatures across much of the Midwest and South in December helped bring the warm, moist air that helped form thunderstorms. Some of this is due to La Nina, which generally brings warmer than normal winter temperatures to the Southern U.S. But scientists also expect atypical, warm weather in the winter to become more common as the planet warms.

“The worst-case scenario happened. Warm air in the cold season, middle of the night,” said John Gordon, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Louisville, Kentucky.

Once the storm formed, exceptionally strong wind shear appears to have prevented the tornadoes from dissipating, experts say. Tornadoes are thought to die off when thunderstorm updrafts lose energy.

Tornadoes typically lose energy in a matter of minutes, but in this case it was hours, Gensini said. That’s partly the reason for the exceptionally long path of Friday's storm, going more than 200 miles or so, he said. The record was 219 miles and was set by a tornado that struck three states in 1925. Gensini thinks this one will surpass it once meteorologists finish analyzing it.

“In order to get a really long path length, you have to have a really fast moving storm. This storm was moving well over 50 miles per hour for a majority of its life,” Gensini said. That's not the speed of the winds, but of the overall storm movement.

“You’re talking about highway-speed storm motions,” Gensini said.

HOW RELATED IS CLIMATE CHANGE TO TORNADO OUTBREAKS?

It’s complicated. Scientists are still trying to sort out the many conflicting factors about whether human-caused climate change is making tornadoes more common — or even more intense. About 1,200 twisters hit the U.S. each year — though that figure can vary — according to the NOAA National Severe Storms Laboratory. No other country sees as many.

Attributing a specific storm like Friday's to the effects of climate change remains very challenging. Less than 10% of severe thunderstorms produce tornadoes, which makes drawing conclusions about climate change and the processes leading up to them tricky, said Harold Brooks, a tornado scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory.

Scientists have observed changes taking place to the basic ingredients of a thunderstorm, however, as the planet warms. Gensini says in the aggregate, extreme storms are “becoming more common because we have a lot warmer air masses in the cool season that can support these types of severe weather outbreaks.”

The U.S. is likely to see more tornadoes occur in the winter, Brooks said, as national temperatures rise above the long-term average. Fewer events will take place in the summer, he said.

Furtado of the University of Oklahoma said tornado alley, a term used to describe where many twisters hit the U.S., has shifted eastward into the Mississippi River Valley. That shift is because of increases in temperature, moisture and shear.

“Bottom line: The people in the Mississippi River Valley and Ohio River Valley are becoming increasingly vulnerable to more tornadic activity with time,” he said.

COCONUT GROVE, Fla. — From the arid deserts of Arizona to the lush foliage of Florida, trees can make a big difference in the world around us.

“Trees are crucially important for our urban environments,” said Ariane Middel, an assistant professor at Arizona State University.

Trees also make a big difference in the places people to choose to live.

“One of the reasons we love certain neighborhoods and value them is the urban canopy cover,” said Chris Baraloto, associate director of the Institute of Environment at Florida International University in Miami.

Baraloto and a team of researchers are mapping the urban canopy of trees to see what benefits they have to the areas where they are located.

“One way we look at the trees is how much carbon they store from the atmosphere,” Baraloto said. “Another very important aspect that we're also measuring in a complementary project is the cooling effect of trees.”

Both carbon capture and shade are two major arguments for planting more trees to help offset climate change impacts. Yet, not all trees are created equal.

“I think it's important to consider which services we value, in which locations before we make an assessment of what type of tree is appropriate,” Baraloto said.

Some of the trees increasingly under reconsideration include palm trees.

“It's not about, “Is a palm tree good or bad?’ It's about, ‘Is the palm tree an appropriate tree to provide the ecosystem services that are important in this location?’” Baraloto said.

In a rapidly warming world, cities from Los Angeles to Miami Beach and West Palm Beach are looking into whether palm trees are really the best trees for the cities to continue planting.

“Many appreciate the feathery look, but they don't cover as broad an area generally,” Baraloto said. “And, so, some of the actual carbon in the canopy, the cooling effect of the canopy is a little bit different.”

With hotter summers – and a growing number of days above 90 degrees in the South and Southwest - that cooling effect is becoming even more critical.

“Shade is really the number one design feature that you can use to keep people comfortable outdoors in the summer,” Middel said.

In communities all over, which trees work best to provide shade remains a big question, and it's one that researchers are working to answer.

“We've actually put weather stations underneath different types of trees to look at the cooling impact,” Baraloto said.

It’s an impact that climate change has now pushed to the forefront.

“The importance of trees in an urban context has accelerated,” Baraloto said. “And it's a great platform from which to discuss how trees are important in our lives and to make these decisions in an educated fashion.”

It’s a discussion that can help trees keep reaching for the skies as they help people on the ground.

TAMPA, Fla. — To spend some time with Tiffany Burns is to truly fall in love with one of the most docile creatures on the planet. Burns is the director of conservation research at ZooTampa and spends most of her time caring for manatees, a species whose existence is now being threatened because of climate change.

On a recent Tuesday morning, Tiffany and her colleagues were spending their lunch hours bottle feeding four manatees that had been orphaned by their moms. Her eventual hope is to get these mammals to weigh at least 600 pounds so they can then be released back into the waters off the Florida coast.

"We’re like a hospital where every patient is treated uniquely," she said.

But these manatees and others everywhere are facing a very uncertain future out in the wild. As ocean waters warm because of climate change, the grass and seaweed these creatures eat are dying off. Because of that, many manatees are starving to death.

"What we’re seeing is thinner body conditions; animals not getting enough nutrients to survive," Burns added.

The die-off of manatees this year alone is unprecedented since the start of October researchers have documented at least 1,000 deaths, that’s more than any other year on record.

Jamie Woodley with Tampa Electric is also watching what's happening closely. Her company manages the Manatee Viewing Center in Apollo Beach, Florida. People from all over the world come here to see manatees up close.

"This facility allows people to see them in the wild," she said.

A nearby power plant pumps warm water into an adjacent canal, basically creating a hot tub for these docile creatures. Given how much danger the species is in, people like Jamie Woodley see the Manatee Viewing Center as a chance to educate the public.

It’s not just climate-changing killing manatees, but also boat strikes.

"You want your kids to grow up and see the animals you saw, and every animal as a purpose," she said.

Back at ZooTampa, Tiffany Burns and her colleagues are calling on the federal government to add manatees back to the endangered species list. The hope is that added protection might save the remaining number of manatees left.

"Unfortunately, manatees aren’t alone. They face their own challenges, but there are a lot of species out there just like that facing their own challenges."

Wisconsin is the largest producer of cranberries— with over half of the U.S. production in 2020.

However, at the Wisconsin Cranberry Research Station, production of cranberries have been low the past couple years. 

“Warm spells during the middle of the winter might melt some of the snow and expose the plant tissue to low temperatures and wind followed by really cold temperatures has resulted in yield lost,” says Amaya Athucham, a professor at the University of Wisconsin. "That’s something we’ve seen and something we expect to see more and more.” 

That is why this research station exists. It conducts experiments on cranberries to make them more sustainable for production, among many other features.  

“There’s a lot of potential to untap the genetics in the cranberry vine itself to take a look at things as frost tolerance, disease resistance, insect resistance, to make the plant more sustainable,” says Lochner. “Our growers have been growing cranberries since the 1800s, and they’re committed to being economically and environmentally sustainable to pass it onto the next generation."

According to Hilary Sandler at the University of Massachusetts, climate change is a driving factor for lack of production. 

“This year, during July, we had a lot of warm temperatures, a lot of rainfall, and that creates the perfect conditions for fungi to thrive,” Sandler says. “And those are the ones who cause fruit rot, for the most part.” 

Amaya Atucham, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, is conducting experiments on cranberry plants to see how to make them more adaptable to cold weather.  

“If we can identify individuals that have higher tolerance to cold – we can make crosses with other individuals and make new cultivars that we can provide to growers,” Atucham says. “We don’t do any GMOs. We just try to find diversity – that’s why it’s important to protect the diversity of these plants. We can find individuals that might have the strength of higher cold hardiness and then we can cross them to create new cultivars.” 

When it comes to environmental problems, it trickles into economic problems. Less production means less economic gains for farmers. That is why the research station is working around the clock to improve cranberry farming to make it more sustainable for the economy. 

 

“Having that partnership and working together to identify what are the problems that the industry have. How to be more sustainable environmentally but economically as well,” Atucham  says. “How can we do that research to help the industry move forward is key to the success of the challenges we have in the future. This is only getting to get harder, so the solution to that is working together and doing research to find answers.” 

This story was originally published on Newsy.com.

LEE, N.H. — As the final days of fall linger, life on the farm grows a bit colder and quieter, but for Ryan Courtwright, there is still plenty of work to be done.

Courtwright is responsible for overseeing a 300-acre farm in Lee, New Hampshire. While it might look like any other commercial dairy operation, the land is owned by the University of New Hampshire. Courtwright is an employee of the university and in a way, so are these dairy cows.

Most of their lives are monitored for various research studies. One of the most recent studies is looking at how much methane these cows produce. Their methane output is measured by a small machine. Grain is placed inside the machine and as cows place their heads inside to eat, methane measurements are taken.

“There’s more methane coming from the front end of the cow than the rear end,” Courtwright said with a bit of a smile on his face.

But what these cows likely don’t realize, is that they’re on the front lines of combating climate change.

Andre Brito is a researcher at UNH and has spent the last few years feeding cows seaweed in various forms or another. What he and his team have found is that by adding even a small amount of seaweed into a cow's diet, they can reduce the amount of methane cows produce by up to 20%.

“Not necessarily replace all the hay in the diet. We are basically replacing small amounts of what’s fed to dairy cows,” Brito said.

The methane from these cows is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The harm those gasses are doing to the atmosphere is profound. By some estimates, 25% of all methane is produced directly from fermentation by cows.

“We should be looking at this now. It’s very important to be looking at solutions right now,” he added.

For farmers, the best part of all this is that even by supplementing just small amounts of seaweed into these cows’ diets, milk production and milk quality remained incredibly high.

Over the next few years, Brito and his team are hoping to study various kinds of seaweed, and measure how different types of the plant impact methane production.