SECRETARY KERRY'S STATEMENT ON 'CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION AND RESILIENCE'

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience
Press Statement
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
June 9, 2015

Climate change poses a threat to every country on Earth, and we all need to do what we can to take advantage of the small window of opportunity we still have to stave off its worst, most disastrous impacts. But even as we take unprecedented steps to mitigate the climate threat, we also have to ensure our communities are prepared for the impacts we know are headed our way – and the impacts we are already seeing all over the world in the form of heat waves, floods, historic droughts, ocean acidification and more.

Thanks to President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, we’ve taken a number of important steps to increase the resilience of American communities. But as the President has always said, this is a global challenge, and we’re not going to get very far if we keep our efforts contained within our borders. That’s why the United States is deeply committed to helping the rest of the world – especially the poorest and most vulnerable nations – adapt to the changing climate as well.

As part of that commitment, last fall, President Obama announced his intention to create a private-public partnership to provide climate data and information to help promote resilient development worldwide. Today we formally launched the Climate Services for Resilient Development partnership, along with the government of the United Kingdom and our partners at the American Red Cross, the Asian Development Bank, Esri, Google, the Inter-American Development and the Skoll Global Threats Fund. In addition to the $34 million we and our partners are putting toward that new partnership, we also announced a series of individual steps we’re taking to make adapting to climate change easier around the globe – including, for example, the volunteer “climate resilience corps” that the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps will be launching in developing countries, and NASA’s release of the first-ever climate modeling system that breaks data down to the country level, which will enable countries to better target their individual adaptation planning efforts.

In the United States, we’ve developed some of the most advanced technologies and scientific expertise on climate change, and we want to make sure these tools are reaching those who need it the most. Each of the commitments announced today will make it easier for people to take control of their own futures and play an active role in helping to prepare their communities, their countries, and ultimately their planet for the changes ahead.

When it comes to confronting climate change, no country should be forced to go it alone – because no country can possibly address this threat alone. It will require all of us – every country, around the world, doing what it can to contribute to the solution. That understanding is at the core of the initiatives we are unveiling today, it’s what is driving our work toward an ambitious global agreement in Paris later this year, and it’s what will continue to guide our leadership in the fight against climate change in the months and years to come.

NSF VIDEO: DISCOVER MADE BENEATH ANTARCTICA'S MCMURDO DRY VALLEYS

LIFE BENEATH THE SEAFLOOR

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
No limit to life in deep sediment of ocean's "deadest" region

Marine scientists find microbes from seafloor to igneous basement below
"Who in his wildest dreams could have imagined that, beneath the crust of our Earth, there could exist a real ocean...a sea that has given shelter to species unknown?"

So wrote Jules Verne almost 150 years ago in A Journey to the Center of the Earth.

He was correct: Ocean deeps are anything but dead.

Now, scientists have found oxygen and oxygen-breathing microbes all the way through the sediment from the seafloor to the igneous basement at seven sites in the South Pacific gyre, considered the "deadest" location in the ocean.

Findings contrast with previous studies

Their findings contrast with previous discoveries that oxygen was absent from all but the top few millimeters to decimeters of sediment in biologically productive regions of the ocean.

The results are published today in a paper in the journal Nature Geoscience.

"Our objective was to understand the microbial community and microbial habitability of sediment in the deadest part of the ocean," said scientist Steven D'Hondt of the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography, lead author of the paper.

"Our results overturn a 60-year-old conclusion that the depth limit to life is in the sediment just meters below the seafloor in such regions.

"We found that there is no limit to life in this sediment. Oxygen and aerobic microbes hang in there all the way to the igneous basement, to at least 75 meters below the seafloor."

Under the seafloor, life all the way down

Based on the researchers' predictive model and core samples they collected in 2010 from the research drillship JOIDES Resolution, they believe that oxygen and aerobic microbes occur throughout the sediment in up to 37 percent of the world's oceans and 44 percent of the Pacific Ocean.

They found that the best indicators of oxygen penetration to the igneous basement are a low sedimentation accumulation rate and a relatively thin sediment layer.

Sediment accumulates at just a few decimeters to meters per million years in the regions where the core samples were collected.

In the remaining 63 percent of the ocean, most of the sediment beneath the seafloor is expected to lack dissolved oxygen and to contain anaerobic communities.

While the researchers found evidence of life throughout the sediment, they did not detect a great deal of it.

Life in the slow lane

The team found extremely slow rates of respiration and approximately 1,000 cells per cubic centimeter of subseafloor sediment in the South Pacific gyre--rates and quantities that had been nearly undetectable.

"It's really hard to find life when it's not very active and is in extremely low concentrations," said D'Hondt.

According to D'Hondt and co-author Fumio Inagaki of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, the discovery of oxygen throughout the sediment may have significant implications for Earth's chemical evolution.

The oxidized sediment is likely carried into the mantle at subduction zones, regions of the seafloor where tectonic plates collide, forcing one plate beneath the other.

"Subduction of these big regions where oxygen penetrates through the sediment and into the igneous basement introduces oxidized minerals to the mantle, which may affect the chemistry of the upper mantle and the long-term evolution of Earth's surface oxidation," D'Hondt said.

Holistic approach to study of subseafloor biosphere

The principal research funders were the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

"We take a holistic approach to the subseafloor biosphere," said Rick Murray, co-author of the paper. Murray is on leave from Boston University, currently serving as director of the NSF Division of Ocean Sciences.

"Our team includes microbiologists, geochemists, sedimentologists, physical properties specialists and others--a hallmark of interdisciplinary research."

The research involved 35 scientists from 12 countries.

The project is part of the NSF-funded Center for Dark Energy Biosphere Investigations (C-DEBI), which explores life beneath the seafloor.

The research is also part of the Deep Carbon Observatory, a decade-long international science initiative to investigate the 90 percent of Earth's carbon located deep inside the planet.

The Nature Geoscience paper is available online.

-NSF-

NASA VIDEO: SCIENCE CASTS: THE GREAT LAKES OF EUROPA

"DEEP TIME" FUTURE PREDICTIONS

Time spiral: looking back through time to understand future climate change.  Credit: NASA

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 
Back to the future: Scientists look into Earth's "Deep Time" to predict future effects of climate change

Climate change alters the way in which species interact with one another--a reality that applies not just to today or to the future, but also to the past, according to a paper published by a team of researchers in this week's issue of the journal Science.

"We found that, at all time scales, climate change can alter biotic interactions in very complex ways," said paleoecologist Jessica Blois of the University of California, Merced, the paper's lead author.

"If we don't incorporate this information when we're anticipating future changes, we're missing a big piece of the puzzle."

Blois asked for input from researchers who study "deep time," or the very distant past, as well as those who study the present, to help make predictions about what the future holds for life on Earth as climate shifts.

Co-authors of the paper are Phoebe Zarnetske of Yale University, Matthew Fitzpatrick of the University of Maryland, and Seth Finnegan of the University of California, Berkeley.

"Climate change and other human influences are altering Earth's living systems in big ways, such as changes in growing seasons and the spread of invasive species," said Alan Tessier, program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Environmental Biology, which co-funded the research with NSF's Division of Earth Sciences.

"This paper highlights the value of using information about past episodes of rapid change from Earth's history to help predict future changes to our planet's ecosystems."

Scientists are seeing responses in many species, Blois said, including plants that have never been found in certain climates--such as palms in Sweden--and animals like pikas moving to higher elevations as their habitats grow too warm.

"The worry is that the rate of current and future climate change is more than species can handle," Blois said.

The researchers are studying how species interactions may change between predators and prey, and between plants and pollinators, and how to translate data from the past and present into future models.

"One of the most compelling current questions science can ask is how ecosystems will respond to climate change," said Lisa Boush, program director in NSF's Division of Earth Sciences.

"These researchers address this using the fossil record and its rich history," said Boush. "They show that climate change has altered biological interactions in the past, driving extinction, evolution and the distribution of species.

"Their study allows us to better understand how modern-day climate change might influence the future of biological systems and the rate at which that change will occur."

While more research is needed, Blois said, changes can be observed today as well as in the past, although it's harder to gather information from incomplete fossil records.

Looking back, there were big changes at the end of major climate change periods, such as the end of the last Ice Age when large herbivores went extinct.

Without those mega-eaters to keep certain plants at bay, new communities of flora developed, most of which in turn are now gone.

"People used to think climate was the major driver of all these changes," Blois said, "but it's not just climate. It's also extinction of the megafauna, changes in the frequency of natural fires, and expansion of human populations. They're all linked."

People are comfortable with the way things have been, said Blois. "We've known where to plant crops, for example, and where to find water."

Now we need to know how to respond, she said, to changes that are already happening--and to those coming in the near future.

-NSF-

MARS MOSAIC

FROM: NASA
Panoramic View From Near 'Point Lake' in Gale Crater, Sol 106

This panorama is a mosaic of images taken by the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on the NASA Mars rover Curiosity during the 106th Martian day, or sol, of the mission (Nov. 22, 2012). The rover was near a location called "Point Lake" for an overlook of a shallow depression called "Yellowknife Bay" which is in the left third of this scene, in the middle distance.

The image spans 360 degrees, with south at the center. It has been white-balanced to show what the rocks and soils in it would look like if they were on Earth.

Image Credit-NASA-JPL-Caltech-Malin Space Science Systems