Introducing the Climate Solutions Explorer

 IIASA recently launched the Climate Solutions Explorer -- a comprehensive resource that visualizes and presents vital data about climate mitigation, climate impacts, vulnerabilities, and risks arising from development and climate change.

The website utilizes the latest data and state-of-the-art models to assess future trends related to development- and climate-induced challenges. By offering up-to-date information on climate mitigation and impacts, the Climate Solutions Explorer aims to be a go-to platform for anyone interested in accessing the latest research on climate change and net-zero mitigation pathways.

The Climate Solutions Explorer is the result of a long-standing collaboration and contributions from various sources within and external to the ENGAGE project -- a global consortium consisting of nearly 30 partners, coordinated by IIASA and co-led by several other institutions. The project, which has been running since September 2019 and will conclude in December this year, aims to explore the feasibility of pathways that align with the objectives of the Paris Agreement.

So, what can you expect from the Climate Solutions Explorer website?

"The platform offers a diverse range of content, including an interactive map that visualizes climate change impacts, national and regional data dashboards showcasing impacts and mitigation pathways, and articles covering a wide array of climate-related topics and countries. The website also provides publicly available data, allowing users to delve deep into their preferred areas of exploration," explains Edward Byers, a researcher in the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program and coordinator of the website.

One particularly interesting feature of the website is the "Net Zero Stories" section, which features narratives written by local experts. These stories document national transitions towards sustainable, net-zero societies and offer insightful analyses on the trade-offs and co-benefits associated with these transformations. With an understanding that sustainable transitions have commonalities but also regional variations, the Net Zero Stories shed light on the unique challenges and opportunities faced by different countries.

For those interested in specific countries, the Climate Solutions Explorer offers national dashboards that consider variables such as socioeconomics, emissions, mitigation options, and climate impacts at varying levels of exposure and risk. This enables users to gain valuable insights into the climate landscape of specific countries and the potential implications of global warming.

"The launch of the Climate Solutions Explorer represents a significant step forward in our collective efforts to tackle climate change. By providing easy access to the latest data, cutting-edge models, and expert analysis, this comprehensive website empowers individuals, businesses, and policymakers to make informed decisions and contribute to a more sustainable future. Whether you're interested in understanding the impacts of climate change or exploring net-zero pathways, the Climate Solutions Explorer is your go-to resource for all things climate-related," Byers concludes.

Climate science is catching up to climate change with predictions that could improve proactive response

 In Africa, climate change impacts are experienced as extreme events like drought and floods. Through the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (which leverages expertise from USG science agencies, universities, and the private sector) and the IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Center, it has been possible to predict and monitor these climatic events, providing early warning of their impacts on agriculture to support humanitarian and resilience programming in the most food insecure countries of the world.

Science is beginning to catch up with and even get ahead of climate change. In a commentary for the journal Earth's Future, UC Santa Barbara climate scientist Chris Funk and co-authors assert that predicting the droughts that cause severe food insecurity in the Eastern Horn of Africa (Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia) is now possible, with months-long lead times that allow for measures to be taken that can help millions of the region's farmers and pastoralists prepare for and adapt to the lean seasons.

"We've gotten very good at making these predictions," said Funk, who directs UCSB's Climate Hazards Center, a multidisciplinary alliance of scientists who work to predict droughts and food shortages in vulnerable areas.

In the summer of 2020, the CHC predicted that climate change, interacting with naturally occurring La Niña events, would bring devastating sequential drought to the Eastern Horn of Africa. The region normally has two wet seasons a year -- spring and fall. An unprecedented five rainy seasons in a row failed. Eight months before each of those failures, the CHC anticipated droughts. Fortunately, agencies and other collaborators paid heed to those early warnings and were able to take effective actions, Funk said. Within the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the forecasts helped motivate hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance for millions of starving people.

These efforts were a far cry from similar predictions of sequential droughts that the researchers, collaborating with the USAID-supported Famine Early Warning Systems Network, made for the same region ten years earlier. Predictions that went largely unheeded. "More than 250,000 Somalis died," Funk said. "It was just really horrible."

At the time, he said, the available forecasts weren't able to predict rainfall deficits in this region. While the models said East Africa would become wetter, observations showed substantial declines in the spring wet season. And to be fair, he added, the group's long-range weather prediction capabilities were still in their infancy. "We made an accurate forecast, but we didn't understand very well what was going on scientifically," Funk said. "Now, following our success in 2016/17, and extensive outreach efforts, the humanitarian relief community appreciates the value of our early warning systems."

In the intervening 10 years, the researchers have worked to discern and understand the broad, often distant mechanisms that drive drought in the Eastern Horn of Africa and create accurate, tailored forecasts for the region. They built on research showing that increased rainfall around Indonesia, caused by anthropogenic increases in sea surface temperatures, resulted in less moisture flowing on to the East African coast during the rainy months. These changes in moisture flows drive back-to-back droughts. But as climate change increases western Pacific sea surface temperatures, it becomes more and more possible to predict devastating water shortages.

"We've published about 15 scientific papers on this topic," Funk said, "and we've forecasted dry seasons in 2016-2017, which helped prevent a famine that year." As he discusses in his book "Drought, Flood, Fire (Cambridge University Press, 2021)," "climate change amplifies natural sea surface temperature variations, which opens the door to better forecasts."

In the new commentary and a longer paper currently at preprint stage, also coming out in Earth's Future, the co-authors highlight, respectively, the opportunities associated with these long range outlooks, and the physical mechanisms explaining the predictability.

"To reduce the impacts of climate extremes, we need to look for opportunities," said CHC Specialist and Operations Analyst Laura Harrison. "We need to pay attention to not just how climate is changing, but how these changes can support more effective predictions for droughts and for advantageous cropping conditions. As a community, we also need to foster communication about successful resilience strategies."

"Flooding still happens, drought still happens, people still get hurt, but we can try to reduce the harm."

With climate models that can predict extreme ocean states at eight-month lead times, and weather forecasts that can make projections at two weeks and at 45 days, CHC scientists and researchers now can provide actionable information to collaborators on the ground to help local farmers anticipate and plan for dry conditions.

"We're working with this group called Plant Village, who is providing agricultural advisories to millions of Kenyans, and helping them take actions that can help make their crops more drought-resistant," Funk said.

This proactivity is something Funk and collaborators hope will become a bigger part of climate change strategy for the Eastern Horn of Africa, as their models predict more of these drought-forming conditions in the region's future. A better local understanding of the mechanisms that result in droughts, and investments in early warning systems and adaptation measures, may initially be costly, they said, "but are relatively inexpensive when compared to post-impact, response-based alternatives such as humanitarian assistance and/or funding safety-net programs."

Education and participation can build trust and ultimately increase resilience. The CHC is building on what they learned in East Africa, and using it to feed partnerships in other parts of the world. In southern Africa, for example, they are collaborating with the Zimbabwe Meteorological Services Department and the Knowledge Impact Network to support the development of actionable climate services.

"Understanding that climate change makes extremes more frequent is really empowering because now we can try to anticipate those bad effects," Funk said. "Flooding still happens, drought still happens, people still get hurt, but we can try to reduce the harm."

Life on Earth didn't arise as described in textbooks

 No, oxygen didn't catalyze the swift blossoming of Earth's first multicellular organisms. The result defies a 70-year-old assumption about what caused an explosion of oceanic fauna hundreds of millions of years ago.

Between 685 and 800 million years ago, multicellular organisms began to appear in all of Earth's oceans during what's known as the Avalon explosion, a forerunner era of the more famed Cambrian explosion. During this era, sea sponges and other bizarre multicellular organisms replaced small single-celled amoeba, algae and bacteria, which until then, had had run of the planet for more than 2 billion years.

Up until now, it was believed that increased oxygen levels triggered the evolutionary arrival of more advanced marine organisms. This is being disproved by University of Copenhagen researchers working together with colleagues from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the University of Southern Denmark and Lund University, among others.

By studying the chemical composition of ancient rock samples from an Omani mountain range, the researchers have been able to "measure" oxygen concentrations in the world's oceans from when these multicellular organisms appeared. Defying expectations, the result shows that Earth's oxygen concentrations had not increased. Indeed, levels remained 5-10 times lower than today, which is roughly how much oxygen there is at twice the height of Mount Everest.

"Our measurements provide a good picture of what average oxygen concentrations were in the world's oceans at the time. And it's apparent to us that there was no major increase in the amount of oxygen when more advanced fauna began to evolve and dominate Earth. In fact, there was somewhat of a slight decrease," says Associate Professor Christian J. Bjerrum, who has been quantifying the conditions surrounding the origin of life for the past 20 years.

Revises our understanding of life's origins

The new result puts to rest a 70-year research story that advances the centrality of higher oxygen concentrations in the development of more advanced life on our planet.

"The fact that we now know, with a high degree of certainty, that oxygen didn't control the development of life on Earth provides us with an entirely new story about how life arose and what factors controlled this success," says the researcher, adding:

"Specifically, it means that we need to rethink a lot of the things that we believed to be true from our childhood learning. And textbooks need to be revised and rewritten."

There remains much that the researchers don't know, as well as and a plethora of controversy. Therefore, Bjerrum hopes that the new result can spur other researchers around the world to reconsider their previous results and data in a new light.

"There are many research sections around the world, including in the United States and China, that have done lots of research on this topic, whose earlier results may shed important new details if interpreted on the basis that oxygen didn't drive the development of life," says the researcher.

Absence of oxygen may have aided development

So, if not extra oxygen, what triggered the era's explosion of life? Perhaps the exact opposite, explains the researcher:

"It's interesting that the explosion of multicellular organisms occurs at a time with low concentrations of atmospheric and oceanic oxygen. That indicates that organisms benefited from lower levels of oxygen and were able to develop in peace, as the water chemistry protected their stem cells naturally," says Christian J. Bjerrum.

According to the researcher, the same phenomenon has been studied in cancer research, in the stem cells of humans and other animals. Here, colleagues at Lund University observed that low oxygen levels are crucial for keeping stem cells under control until an organism decides that the cell ought to develop into a specific type of cell, such as a muscle cell.

"We know that animals and humans must be able to maintain low concentrations of oxygen in order to control their stem cells, and in so doing, develop slowly and sustainably. With too much oxygen, the cells will develop, and in the worst case, mutate wildly and perish. It is far from inconceivable that this mechanism applied back then," concludes Christian J. Bjerrum.

Fossils from Oman

In the new study, the researchers analysed rock samples from, among other places, the Oman Mountains in northern Oman. While quite high and very dry today, the mountains were on the seabed during the Avalon explosion's rapid blossoming of organism diversity.

The researchers have had their findings confirmed in fossils from three different mountain ranges around the world: the Oman Mountains (Oman), Mackenzie Mountains (NW Canada) and the Yangtze Gorges area of South China.

Over time, clay and sand from land are washed into the sea, where they settle into layers on the seabed. By going down through these layers and examining their chemical composition, researchers can get a picture of ocean chemistry at a particular geologic time.

The analyses were performed using Thallium and Uranium isotopes found in the mountains, which the researchers were able to extract data from, and in doing so, calculate oxygen levels from many hundreds of millions of years ago.

Flying reptiles had nurturing parental style

 Did the pterosaurs, flying reptiles from the days of the dinosaurs, practice parental care or not? New research by scientists from Ireland (University College Cork), China (Nanjing and Yunnan Universities) and the UK (University of Bristol and Queen Mary University of London) shows that pterosaurs were indeed caring parents -- but only the larger species.

This solves a long-standing conundrum. To be able to fly soon after hatching from the egg, a bird or pterosaur must have well-developed wings. Studies of smaller pterosaurs from the Jurassic showed that their babies already had large wings when they hatched and they could have wobbled into flight within a few days of birth.

But did this work for the later pterosaurs which were much larger in size? In the Cretaceous, pterosaurs usually had wingspans of 5 metres, and some even reached 10-15 metres, the size of a small glider.

"This was a difficult project," says the study leader, Dr Zixiao Yang from University College Cork (UCC). 'We needed examples of pterosaurs where we had at least one hatchling or very young specimen as well as adults so we could study their growth rates. But baby pterosaurs are really rare."

Dr Yang collaborated with Professor Baoyu Jiang from Nanjing University, Professor Michael Benton of University of Bristol, Professor Xu Xing of Yunnan University, and Professor Maria McNamara of UCC on the research.

"Luckily, we were able to use some classic specimens from the Jurassic of Europe and the Cretaceous of North America, together with new finds from China. By measuring the skulls, backbones, wings, and hind legs, we were able to test for differences in the relative growth of different parts of the body."

The research focussed on testing the allometry, or how the creatures' characteristics changed with size.

"We are all familiar with allometry in human babies, puppies and kittens -- their heads, eyes and knees are huge, and the rest of the body grows faster to get to adult proportions. It's the same with many animals, including dinosaurs and pterosaurs. The babies have cute faces, with short noses, big eyes, and big heads," Dr Yang said.

"The small, bird-sized, Jurassic pterosaurs were born with large wings and strong arms and legs, evidence that the babies could fly from birth. As they grew from baby to adult, their arms and legs showed negative allometry, meaning they started large and were then growing more slowly than the rest of the body."

"But it was different for the Cretaceous giants. They also started as small babies, but the key limb bones show positive allometry through growth, suggesting a very different developmental model."

"This means that the pterosaur giants had sacrificed low-input childcare to the need to grow huge eventually as adults. Minimal childcare makes sense in the early evolutionary history of these ancient reptiles because it saves energy. But to grow huge, the larger pterosaurs had a problem -- it basically took much longer to become an adult, and therefore parents needed to protect their young from accidents. The babies of all pterosaurs, large and small, were small because of the limitations of egg size. Investing in childcare by having non-flying babies was offset in evolutionary terms by allowing pterosaurs to evolve truly huge sizes."

"We see the same thing in birds and mammals today. Some birds fly very young, and of course some mammals like cattle and antelopes are on their feet the day they are born. But this kind of behaviour is risky for the babies because they are often clumsy and are easy targets for predators; it's costly also for the mother because the babies must have highly developed wings or legs at the point of birth. So, we see the same thing in extinct pterosaurs. They were restricted in maximum body size until the end of the Jurassic, at which point their parental care behaviour changed, and then they could achieve huge sizes."

Early humans were weapon woodwork experts, study finds

 A 300,000-year-old hunting weapon has shone a new light on early humans as woodworking masters, according to a new study.

State-of-the-art analysis of a double-pointed wooden throwing stick, found in Schöningen in Germany three decades ago, shows it was scraped, seasoned and sanded before being used to kill animals. The research indicates early humans' woodworking techniques were more developed and sophisticated than previously understood.

The findings, published today (Wednesday, 19 July) in PLOS ONE, also suggest the creation of lightweight weapons may have enabled group hunts of medium and small animals. The use of throwing sticks as hunting aids could have involved the entire community, including children.

Dr Annemieke Milks, of the University of Reading's Department of Archaeology, led the research. She said: "Discoveries of wooden tools have revolutionised our understanding of early human behaviours. Amazingly these early humans demonstrated an ability to plan well in advance, a strong knowledge of the properties of wood, and many sophisticated woodworking skills that we still use today.

"These lightweight throwing sticks may have been easier to launch than heavier spears, indicating the potential for the whole community to take part. Such tools could have been used by children while learning to throw and hunt."

Co-author Dirk Leder said: "The Schöningen humans used a spruce branch to make this aerodynamic and ergonomic tool. The woodworking involved multiple steps including cutting and stripping off the bark, carving it into an aerodynamic shape, scraping away more of the surface, seasoning the wood to avoid cracking and warping, and sanding it for easier handling."

High-impact weapon

Found in 1994, the 77cm-long stick is one of several different tools discovered in Schöningen, which includes throwing spears, thrusting spears and a second similarly sized throwing stick.

The double-pointed throwing stick -- analysed to an exceptionally high level of detail for this new study -- was most likely used by early humans to hunt medium-sized game like red and roe deer, and possibly fast-small prey including hare and birds that were otherwise difficult to catch. The throwing sticks would have been thrown rotationally -- similar to a boomerang -- rather than overhead like a modern-day javelin and may have enabled early humans to throw as far as 30 metres. Although lightweight, the high velocities at which such weapons can be launched could have resulted in deadly high-energy impacts.

The fine surface, carefully shaped points and polish from handling suggest this was a piece of personal kit with repeated use, rather than a quickly made tool that was carelessly discarded.

Principal investigator Thomas Terberger said: "The systematic analysis of the wooden finds of the Schöningen site financed by German Research Foundation provides valuable new insights and further exciting information on these early wooden weapons can be expected soon."

The well-preserved stick is on display at the Forschungsmuseum in Schöningen.