Pablo Escobar's Hippos Overtaking Colombia, More Phytoplankton Is Good for the Planet, and Seeing Climate Change in Daily Weather

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Self-improvement, Science, Astronomy, Education

4.6 • 935 Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2020

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Learn about why a predicted increase in phytoplankton is good news for our environment; how researchers can detect evidence of climate change from just one day of global weather conditions; and how Pablo Escobar's hippos became an invasive species in Colombia.

Oceanographers Predict an Increase in Phytoplankton by Andrea Michelson

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. (2018). Phytoplankton - A Simple Guide | WHOI. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. https://www.whoi.edu/know-your-ocean/ocean-topics/ocean-life/phytoplankton/
UCI News Staff. (2020, January 27). Contradicting prevalent view, UCI oceanographers predict increase in phytoplankton. UCI News. https://news.uci.edu/2020/01/27/contradicting-prevalent-view-uci-oceanographers-predict-increase-in-phytoplankton/
Flombaum, P., Wang, W.-L., Primeau, F. W., & Martiny, A. C. (2020). Global picophytoplankton niche partitioning predicts overall positive response to ocean warming. Nature Geoscience, 13(2), 116–120. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-019-0524-2

The Signal of Human-Caused Climate Change Has Emerged in Everyday Weather by Grant Currin

Sippel, S., Meinshausen, N., Fischer, E. M., Székely, E., & Knutti, R. (2020). Climate change now detectable from any single day of weather at global scale. Nature Climate Change, 10(1), 35–41. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0666-7
Freedman, A. (2020, January 2). The signal of human-caused climate change has emerged in everyday weather, study finds. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/01/02/signal-human-caused-climate-change-has-emerged-every-day-weather-study-finds/
Climate signals detected in global weather. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-01/ez-csd122319.php
Climate Change: Global Temperature | NOAA Climate.gov. (2020). Climate.Gov. https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-temperature

Pablo Escobar's Hippos Have Become an Invasive Species in Colombia by Grant Currin

Drug Lord’s Hippos Make Their Mark on Foreign Ecosystem. (2020). UCSD.edu. https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/feature/drug-lords-hippos-make-their-mark-on-foreign-ecosystem
Alison DeNisco Rayome. (2020, January 29). Pablo Escobar’s hippos have become an invasive species in Colombia. CNET. https://www.cnet.com/news/pablo-escobars-hippos-have-become-an-invasive-species-in-colombia/
Shurin, J. B., Aranguren Riaño, N., Duque Negro, D., Lopez, D. E., Jones, N. T., Laverde‐R, O., Neu, A., & Pedroza Ramos, A. (2020). Ecosystem effects of the world’s largest invasive animal. Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ecy.2991

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com.
0:05.9	I'm Cody Goff. And I'm Ashley Hamer.
0:08.0	Today we've got some good news and some bad news when it comes to our planet.
0:11.8	First, you'll learn about why a predicted
0:13.6	increase in phytoplankton is really good for our environment and then you'll
0:17.9	learn about how researchers can now detect evidence of climate change from
0:21.2	just one day of global weather conditions.
0:24.0	We'll wrap up with the incredible story of how Pablo Escobar's hippos have become an invasive species in Colombia.
0:31.0	From good to bad to weird. Yes! Let's satisfy some curiosity.
0:35.0	You probably don't spend much time thinking about phytoplankton, but they're incredibly
0:41.0	important to our planet.
0:43.1	The microscopic single-celled organisms form the base of almost every ocean food web.
0:49.2	And get this, they produce about half of the oxygen in the atmosphere.
0:53.7	Their survival is really important,
0:56.3	so environmental scientists have been worried
0:58.8	about how phytoplankton might be affected by climate change.
1:02.4	Fortunately, researchers at the University of California Irvine
1:06.0	recently discovered that phytoplankton may actually thrive in warming waters.
1:11.1	You can think of phytoplankton as nutrient recyclers and a lot of their
1:14.9	recycling depends on the circulation of ocean water. Phytoplankton live in the
1:19.3	upper layer of the ocean where they use sunlight to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen through photosynthesis.
1:26.0	They also consume nitrates, phosphates, and sulfur, which typically make it to the upper
	...

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