What Caused a 650-Foot Tsunami?

Now, we have an answer. An international team of scientists, including seismologists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography has concluded that a mountaintop in eastern Greenland collapsed into the sea and triggered a mega-tsunami about (200 meters) 650 feet tall. The giant wave rocked back and forth inside the narrow Dickson Fjord, generating seismic waves that reverberated through Earth’s crust. That rhythmic sloshing phenomenon, known as a seiche, is similar to how water can swing back and forth in a swimming pool or bathtub.

The team says that climate change set the stage for the landslide by melting a glacier at the base of the mountain, which destabilized more than 33 million cubic yards (25 million cubic meters) of rock and ice—enough to fill 10,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The authors say the study shows how climate change could lead to destructive landslides in polar regions. While no people were in the area when the mega-tsunami occurred, the fjord is close to a route commonly used by cruise ships, highlighting the need to monitor these areas as climate change accelerates.

The study was published in the journal Science.

The authors say that cities are warmer than their cool and vegetation-dense surroundings, which can cause air to be drawn toward the urban area and then uplifted. That warm, uplifted air then condenses into rain clouds over urban areas. City skylines can act like mini mountain ranges, making rain clouds around their peaks favorable environments to create storms.

Speaking of rain, there could be less of it in the U.S. West in the future, which is not unexpected, but researchers at The Ohio State University were surprised to find that, while the West is going to get drier, the Northeast will see an extensive increase in rainfall.

The middle section of the U.S. is going to see both. For the rest of this century, there will be higher precipitation in some years but extreme drought in others. An author of the study, James Stagge, said in a statement that in central U.S. states, drought might be really bad one year, and in five years, it might be the wettest period of rainfall in some time. The need to prepare for such extremes is a real challenge, one author said, and we might need to change the way we manage water.

The lead researcher, Kyungmin Sung, said that the scale of change we are seeing is dramatically larger than any natural climate variability. The research suggests that climate change has shifted precipitation patterns in extreme ways that were not experienced before the mid-1800s when industrialization began.

The urban rainfall study was published in the journal Earth’s Future. The U.S. rainfall study was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Sarah Hale, a scientist with ZeroPM, told E&E News that the chemical is absolutely everywhere, and the next discussion in the U.S. will be about how it should be treated and what should be done.

The source of TFA is likely to be refrigerants that have been used to replace gases that depleted the ozone layer. The chemical may also come from pharmaceuticals and pesticides. Additionally, PFAS chemicals degrade into TFA when they are incinerated or treated at a sewage plant, E&E News reports.

The TFA molecule is very small and cannot be removed from water using traditional filtering methods. It’s similar to other PFAS compounds, in that it does not break down naturally.  

There is no scientific consensus that TFA is harmful to humans; however, other compounds in the PFAS family have been linked to certain cancers and health issues. In April, the EPA designated two of them as hazardous substances and issued drinking water standards for six PFAS chemicals. TFA moves through the human body quickly, unlike other forever chemicals that accumulate, and some researchers say it might not do as much damage.

Now, researchers found something even weirder to put on your face—fish gut bacteria. Researchers in Korea identified 22 molecules in the guts of red seabream (Pagrus major) and blackhead seabream (Acanthopagrus schlegelii) fish and evaluated each compound’s ability to inhibit tyrosinase and collagenase enzymes in the lab. Tyrosinase is responsible for melanin production, which causes hyperpigmentation in aging skin, known as age spots or liver spots. Collagenase breaks down the structural protein collagen, causing wrinkles.

Three molecules from the red seabream bacteria inhibited both enzymes the best without damaging the cells, making them potential brightening and anti-wrinkle agents for future cosmetics that could be scientifically sound and not some fishy gimmick.

The study was published in the journal ACS Omega.